The cancer I have is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). After reading everything above you've probably figured out that ALL is made in the bone marrow, hence why it's extremely important for me to have routine bone marrow biopsies. Bone marrow biopsies are a "simple" 20 minute standard procedure done in an operating room under anesthesia. Though anesthesia is not necessary, it's nice as the procedure is quite painful. The biopsy is obtained by breaking through the back of my hip bone with a needle/rod type thing. Once the marrow has been accessed a small liquid blood sample is taken followed by a marrow sample.
This morning, Thursday April 17, 2014, Dr. Greenwald came in and informed me that there were no operating rooms available for my routine biopsy. Yikes! Being said, Greenwald promised sedatives to qualm any nerves and pain meds for obvious reasons. So with a little thought and a lot of guts I let him go in without knocking me out. I'll be adding "bone marrow biopsy without anesthesia" to my list of reasons as to why I'm such a badass.
The beautiful nurse, Renata captured this video clip during the procedure. Unfortunately she started filming a bit late so it's a bit uneventful and doesn't show the gnarly part- the initial break through of my hip bone. Anyway, it's still kinda cool and gives you an idea of what a bone marrow biopsy is like. Enjoy! :)
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