Yo Mama and Kareem

It sounds like the opening line of a bad joke… So what does my mother and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have in common? In reality, it’s not a joke, and just a decade ago was a life or death topic.

Yesterday, I saw on the news that Kareem has been diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), a cancer of the white blood cells. Mom was diagnosed with CML just a bit over ten years ago. At that time, it was grim news, with the only real hope being a bone marrow transplant. Nowadays, you can take a pill every day, and go about your business in a relatively normal way with a terrific prognosis, but it wasn’t always like that. Mom was fortunate enough to get into some early studies that allowed her to persevere until the better medicines came along.

Obviously, I wouldn’t wish this disease on anyone, but getting a famous face talking about CML can’t hurt.