Thankful my prediction didn't come true

Happy to hold Nell

My sister just reminded me of the day a dozen years ago when I had had my Dana-Farber intake appointment and I was standing outside the Cheesecake Factory where she and Korby and Kit, the two friends who had brought me to Boston, were getting a table.

I was on the phone with Jim, in a crouch, sobbing and saying, "I'm never going to see my grandchildren."

Although I said that many times over, the first one stands out because it was all such a shock. One day I was a busy single mother of three, running around like crazy, holding down a full-time newspaper job, playing on a tennis team and running races like the Saint Patrick's Road Race that I had recently completed and during which my fatigue had sent me to the doctor and led to my leukemia diagnosis, and the next day I was a cancer patient facing three rounds of chemotherapy, multiple hospitalizations and a bone marrow transplant.

The time that I remember most clearly occurred later – eight years ago – after my last relapse when, while Diane drove me to the emergency room on a snowy December night and I knew I was facing stronger chemotherapy than ever and my fourth bone marrow transplant, I slid down in the passenger seat and said, once again, "I'm never going to see my grandchildren, I'm never going to see my grandchildren."

And there I was yesterday in the maternity section of Norwalk Hospital holding my two-day-old granddaughter in my arms, feeling the warmth of her body, finding it hard to believe that my baby was now a father, and loving how happy Ben and Meghan looked.

Thanks to Dana-Farber, to The Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation that found me my donor, and to that donor, Denise, and to so many others, my prediction did not come true.

How happy I am to have been proven wrong!