I disappeared for a while — here’s why

I received a troubling medical diagnosis — Leukemia

Christine Penn
11 min readSep 15, 2024
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

After a very normal general health appointment with one of my regular doctors in June of 2023, they recommended that I go see a hematologist. They were concerned about my high and increasing white blood cell count. I had had a couple of surgeries the prior year, which explained the higher numbers back then, but they should have dropped back down by now; 6+ months later after the last surgery. They have been high for a long time and were concerned that it could be an indicator of something else, hence the recommendation to get it checked out.

It took a long time to find a doctor with availability in anything close to the near future and get an appointment, but the initial appointment in October 2023 I thought went well. He felt it was likely nothing and maybe just some left over healing from the prior surgeries. But just to be safe, he ordered a bunch of tests.

Issue Found

One of the tests returned a positive detection for Leukemia. As soon as I saw the test results posted, I was devastated! Leukemia is a form of cancer and it is not curable. This initial diagnosis really knocked me for a loop. I had been noticing an impact in my athletic recovery from the earlier surgeries and was seriously struggling with…

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Christine Penn

Trans woman, parent, cyclist, software engineer, author, chef, and many other things.