Two Years Journey, the Rise from Leukemia and Aneurysm to the Opportunity of a Lifetime

On February 16, 2014, a fellow elder quietly prayed for me: “Lord, give my brother a new bone marrow.” The next day, a Hematologist diagnosed that I had a bone marrow disease. This unbelievable news with no obvious sign or symptom was true. I had an aggressive acute Leukemia. Graphically, the Lord assured me, three times that I would be healed and the disease would not return (Nahum 1, 9). Acting proactively, the Hematologist scheduled my admission into a Florida hospital. Subsequently, a skilled Oncologist induced Chemotherapy immediately. Since I was extremely weak, fall alert sign was posted on my chart. Unfortunately, I disobeyed it one night, fell, and bashed the back my head that sounded like a cracking Styrofoam box. Obviously, whatever that was, it cushioned this death blow. One week later, I experienced excruciating pain at the back of my neck. My left Carotid artery was severed. The result was a massive aneurism that God revealed in the nick of time, after two weeks of severe pains. I was scheduled for, and had successful surgery at an affiliate hospital and recovered in ICU, an unforgettable experience from which God rescued me. Having overcome, I sought for and received a second option, since I was not registered in a Bone Marrow Transplant program at the former hospital. On November 4, 2014, I received stem cell transplant at this new facility. The donor was my brother, seventy-two years old; one of the oldest male stem cell donors in history. Like Jesus suspend on the cross six hours, drained of his blood to redeem me from this curse, my brother spent six hours on his back, to donate six million stem cells to give me a new immune system. I was grafted on day 16, after transplant, and was released to my new life of recovery.

Derrick, a Reading and Language Arts Teacher for many years, hails from the hilly sunshine country side of eastern Hanover, in beautiful, Jamaica. The eight of eleven children who grew up poor but did not allow poverty to define his ambition nor his future. He was always an average student whose ambition was bigger than he was. He learned early that education was the only vehicle towards upward mobility and with dint of sweat and hard work he came to realize his dreams. Guided by parents who fully embraced this mantra: “Hard work is the secret of success” he worked so hard, registered himself in a teacher training college and forged a path so purposely, his fellow cohorts wrote of him in the college Magazine: “Man from west, who never rest.” In 1972 he achieved his first dream, a Teaching Diploma from Mico Teacher’s College in Jamaica, with distinction in Psychology. In 1988, a Certificate in Reading from the University of the West Indies. He further matriculated in 1984 -1986 with a Bachelor of Science and a Masters Of Arts Degree in Education with specialties in Reading and Language Arts, from the University of Western Carolina. Mr. Harding has always had a love for writing and furthered his studies, at Extra Mural writing Center at the University of the West Indies in Kingston Jamaica where he got his first stamp of approval that he had a flair for writing. He continued to hone his skills in writing unpublished short stories and poems. He has two soon to be published novels to his credit, but found compelling reasons to publish his first novel “A Two Years Journey- From, Leukemia and Aneurism, to Total Health.”