What I Wish I Knew Before My AML Diagnosis

What I Wish I Knew Before My AML Diagnosis

What I Wish I Knew Before My AML Diagnosis from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

AML patient and Empowerment Lead, Sasha Tanori, shares what she wishes she knew and what to ask before her AML diagnosis, and the importance of advocacy.

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Transcript: 

Sasha Tanori:

So, one of the biggest things I wish I knew, especially before, was the whole saving your eggs type thing for fertility. That’s one of the biggest things that I honestly really regret because here it is almost what…five, six years later, and I, unfortunately, am infertile, so it really does suck because that was something that I was really looking forward to in my life was like being a parent or being a mom, and at the time, it’s just like…everything happened so fast, it was like, Okay, we’re going to…We did the chemo, and now we’re going to do a couple more rounds and then it’s like, Oh, we found a donor, so you could have your bone marrow transplant…oh my gosh, I can’t say the word, your bone marrow transplant. I think I had mentioned it to my doctor, but he was like, “Well, if we wait, now we’re going to lose the person who’s going to donate to you.” And I was like, “Okay, well, we need to hurry up and get that done, get it over with.

So back then, I really wish I would have advocated for myself more, ask more questions and because thinking back, I’m like, I don’t mind if I would have waited until after having my eggs frozen to find another donor, I think that possibly there could have been someone else out there.

But I think it was just in such of that state of mind of like, “I need to hurry and get this done. It’s life or death, I’m going to possibly die type of situation.” But you know I’m like, “No, I think I would have been okay if I would have waited another month or so until after I froze the eggs.” But you live and you learn, and there’s not really much you can do about it now, unfortunately. But at the time, I really wish that I would have spoken up and advocated for myself more if I would have known that that was going to happen, because like I said, five years later infertile can’t really do anything about it, you know? Yeah, my life is saved, but I can’t have kids though, so you just kind of think it heartedly about it, but yeah, that’s one of the things I really wish I would have advocated for myself more about. For now, I think everything else has been kind of…it’s been good. I mean, I’ve taken it step by step, by day, you just got to put on your big girl panties or put on your big girl shorts, I guess you could say, and just continue going about your day, you gotta wake up, do your job, take care of your family, take care of your life.

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