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"Hi, guys. I&amp;amp;#8217;m handing over the reins today to a coworker who has something to share. I wanted her to post because I know you&amp;amp;#8217;ll give her the same great support you&amp;amp;#8217;ve given me&amp;amp;#8212;she really needs it. &amp;amp;#8212;Erin My name is Suzanne Donaldson and I am a brilliant mother, a good new wife, the photo director of Glamour and, as of a week ago, a cancer patient. I think my story is ironic, a joke, a bad trick being played on me. The irony lies in the fact that I just got married (for a second time) to the most amazing man, Steve Laird, on June 24. And now this. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not fair. Why me? Who shall I be angry at? Where is this coming from? These are all questions that I ask myself constantly but seem to haunt me most in the middle of the night. A few weeks ago I had a routine procedure to remove a polyp in my uterus. In my pre-op blood work my doctor discovered a low white blood cell count. When she retested me after the operation, the count had gone lower. After several visits to a hematologist and several tests, including two bone marrow biopsies&amp;amp;#8212;thank God he didn&amp;amp;#8217;t show me the needle until he was done, because that thing very closely resembles a corkscrew and it&amp;amp;#8217;s not for an enjoyable glass of wine!&amp;amp;#8212;I was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia. It&amp;amp;#8217;s a very rare form of a blood cancer that produces &amp;amp;#8220;hairy&amp;amp;#8221; cells that love to lunch on the healthy ones. Kind of like a Pacman let loose in your body. The day I found out I was at work; my doctor called and I ran out of the office to get the results. When I came back I went straight to Erin. I barged in and really shocked her! I&amp;amp;#8217;ve worked with Erin for four years&amp;amp;#8212;I&amp;amp;#8217;m the person responsible for making sure we get good photos of her for her columns. But I have to admit, I&amp;amp;#8217;d only glanced over her pieces in the cockiest of ways. Why did I have to read about cancer? It didn&amp;amp;#8217;t affect me, nor was I ever going to get it! I spent the better part of that day in the office with Erin and a few of the girls who had heard my news. One of my best friends, Julie, kept staring at me with this long face and sad expression, which was killing me. I know everyone was concerned but I was scared to death and needed to say, snap out of it! Erin told me all about her cancer, and hey, she&amp;amp;#8217;s a healthy, gorgeous redhead! So I, too, was going to be fine. I hoped. That night was a blur, as you can imagine. Denial, rage, confusion and a zillion other emotions swept over me. I have cancer. No I don&amp;amp;#8217;t. I&amp;amp;#8217;m healthy, young, I just got married&amp;amp;#8230;my poor husband, he could have married anyone and he gets the cancer lady. All of it was so overwhelming and so unbelievable&amp;amp;#8212;and how unfair to him. Telling my 13-year-old daughter, Sophie, was the hardest. Her dad was with me in a car driving home from her soccer game when I gave her the news. Tears streamed down her face and we held hands in the back of the Volvo. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t understand what was going on, so how could she ever? We talked a lot that night and I made her look at me a lot. I said, &amp;amp;#8220;Look at me, I am super healthy, and I promise you I am going to beat this.&amp;amp;#8221; I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know if she believed me. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know why I was so hopeful. But I feel like all the research we read and all the information we were given was so positive. For instance, anyone who knows anything about cancer says, &amp;amp;#8220;Of all the cancers you could have gotten, this is the best one to get. This is highly treatable, almost curable!&amp;amp;#8221; I believed it all. In all of our numerous doctor visits, Steve took copious notes. This is a good lesson to anyone who is diagnosed with anything: Bring someone with you. You should not have to be responsible for remembering anything, and someone should be there to reason out all that is being said. That turned out to be my husband, who loves a project such as this. When we didn&amp;amp;#8217;t get the house in Brooklyn we thought we wanted to buy and got cancer instead, I said, &amp;amp;#8220;Look, sweetie, we needed a new project!&amp;amp;#8221; And boy do we have one. Erin also met with Steve and told him that something like this can be harder on the partner than on the person going through the illness, and that he has to take care of himself. I know Steve; he will find the right support group. And we are already trying to meet up with someone in our neighborhood who can coach us on stress meditation. I am the luckiest gal in the world to have someone like him in my life. I can&amp;amp;#8217;t stand this&amp;amp;#8212;but I am strong and what&amp;amp;#8217;s my choice? I will get through this. For my cute kid, for my husband and for my two gorgeous stepdaughters, Chappell and Mary Charles. &amp;amp;#8212;Suzanne"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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