the beginning
in the first act, all the ghosts appear
01-28-08 bloodcancer: this is the day i was diagnosed. the day before, i thought i was sick with the flu. my parents came down from ct to coin me which would help “release the heat” that was trapped in my body. because of my low platelet counts (8 at the time), i hemorrhaged all over. the coining marks were a deep purple rather than the usual dark red. my mom, seeing the discoloration, was convinced that they were releasing some MAJOR heat. So, she said to my dad, “lets do it harder” 
.
that night i coughed up blood, which i suppose was caused by the absence of platelets in my lungs–exacerbated by the coining. the next morning i immediately checked into the emergency room. ironically, if my parents hadn’t coined me, i might not have been diagnosed in time.
aftermath: my parents never will coin me again (they’re still traumatized–you can only imagine how i feel!). i’m also in the new england journal of medicine: one of my dr’s at brigham and woman’s thought it was the best example of coining that they had ever seen. i, of course, didn’t expect anything less for my parents’ lets-do-it-harder workmanship. good job mom and dad!
“i feel the only resort is sleep”
when i reach boston on Jan. 30th, the priority was to start the chemo treatments immediately. but there were some things that i had to do, like decide to take part in a clinical trial or not (imagine trying to make a life and death decision in two days), undergo a bone marrow biopsy, save some sperm just in case the chemo made me infertile, and install the hickman line through which the chemo would be delivered. ALL of this in under two days. friday, Feb 1st, was the day my treatment started. at around midnight, one of my favorite nurses, G* started the chemo. it would run for one terrible week. at the end of the week, my brother wrote the following on the small dry erase board on the wall: “No more chemo”.
02-05-08 untitled: at the time, i was really fighting two diseases: leukemia and some infection(s) that took advantage of my weakened immune system. i continued to cough blood for several weeks. this was an entry that i wrote in the midst of my induction round–something i can only vaguely recall today.
02-16-08 New 5 yr mission Every 5 years, the chinese communist party gather to plan out there next 5 years. here was my plan. :-/
02-18-08 untitled poem untitled and incomplete
02-27-08 cancerthis was when fear caught up to me. up to that point, things felt procedural. suddenly, i was looking into the mirror and reflecting on my mortality. i remember pleading with God to let me live–but feeling completely helpless at the same time–feeling that my fate had already been determined.
this entry also marked the end of my month long hospital stay–i was released on the 29th. three times a day, i walked around the halls on the 5th floor of B+W’s; my drs told me that the more laps i did, the sooner i would get to go home. i did my laps with my mom always trailing behind me. i did my laps because i finally felt like i could do something about my condition.
03-28-08 untitled the night before my birthday; be worthy of your suffering.
-03-28-07 i am alive
-07-16-07 subcutaneous wounds here my true masochistic colors show.
04-19-08 courage and fear the final (at least for this section) meandering discourse.
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