Don't forget the good

I spent about a half-year of my life on the fifth floor of Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. \nI wasn't a candy striper or an intern. I was a cancer patient.\nThese words wouldn't be so daunting if it hadn't been four days after my 17th birthday in 2002, on a cold February afternoon, that my family and I were told I had acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of cancer in the bone marrow.\nMy life, at that moment, changed in every way a life can change.\nI remember, with a little embarrassment, my first question to the doctor wasn't "Am I going to live?" but "Am I going to lose my hair?" My priorities needed a little re-evaluating. But there was no time for that.\nImmediately, I was placed in Riley as an in-patient and the next day I began chemotherapy. \nThe doctors didn't hesitate telling me the liquid dripping into my IV was poison. They didn't hesitate to tell me that my condition would get worse before it got better. They didn't close the doors to my hospital room to keep me from seeing the bald toddlers ride by on big-wheels, chased by a nurse or a mother wheeling along their dripping IV. That image will stick with me, so clearly, forever.\nMy treatment concluded over a six-month period with a bone marrow transplant, a procedure in which chemotherapy eliminates one's current immune system by killing all white blood cells and then rebuilding it with bone marrow from a donor. My donor was my dad. \nI did lose my hair. Once it started coming out, my mom shaved my head. We cried that night together. \nThere were nights when my fever rose dangerously high, when my whole body ached and when I vomited every calorie consumed.\nI had to miss school. I missed prom and had to forego my spot on the golf team. I lost at least a year of being a teenager to focus on survival.\nI'm OK now.\nNext July, I can consider myself officially cured, as it will mark five years since my bone marrow transplant. \nI'm one of the lucky ones. Not just because I endured treatment so smoothly, not just because I've been healthy for three solid years (so many of my floor-mates at Riley died during treatment) and not just because I have an appreciation for life like never before. \nI consider myself so fortunate because of the good, because of the tremendous generosity and the genuine compassion I saw in and experienced from others. My high school peers made sure I never felt forgotten, my family never left me alone and my teachers went out of their way to ensure I would graduate with my class.\nIn a world where the good of real people is left largely unseen by the popular media and where there's a perception of negativity and gloom, I have seen and felt and touched so much good.\nCall it eternal optimism. I have so much hope.