Editor’s note: This is one in a series of stories exploring the survivorship journeys of Novant Health Cancer Institute patients. You’ll find all the stories here. We celebrate our survivors and share their stories to showcase how surviving – and thriving – after a cancer diagnosis is possible. You’ll find all the stories here.
Traci George had been looking forward to her March 2021 annual girls’ trip as a chance to finally enjoy a coveted Miami resort penthouse that the group had been eyeing for a while. “I got to enjoy it for four hours,” she said with a laugh.
Traci had felt off that February. The extremely active, former college athlete couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. “I couldn’t pinpoint it,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t COVID. My eating was off. I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t worked out. I had a headache and just no energy.”
Just before her girls’ trip, family members commented that Traci’s coloring wasn’t right. “I was a gray-yellow color. My energy was low,” she said. A bruise appeared on her hip; she reasoned she had run into the bedpost without remembering. Then a large bruise appeared mysteriously on her hand.
After negative COVID and flu tests, her provider said it was probably something viral and to let it run its course. She boarded the airplane to Miami on Feb. 28, 2021, and thought her head was going to “explode” by the time the plane touched down.
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“I was sitting on the beach with my friends waiting to check in, and I had my bathing suit on,” Traci recalled. “I had all these bruises popping up everywhere. Bruises that hadn’t been there the night before. That alarmed all of us.”
At the encouragement of her husband and friends, Traci went to Miami’s Mount Sinai Medical Center emergency room. “I was in critical condition. They told me had I waited one more day I wouldn’t be here,” she said. “That’s when the news came that I had leukemia. Had I not had the bruises popping up, I’m not sure if I would have gone to the ER.”
Her debilitating headache was from a small brain bleed that had started due to her extremely low blood platelet count. A bone marrow biopsy revealed her leukemia. She spent the next 14 days in Miami’s neuro ICU before being discharged to the care of Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina – closer to home.
“I was in shock at first,” Traci said. “I remember lying there scared to death. My husband was asleep in North Carolina. No one was allowed with me due to COVID. My longest best friend’s husband is a doctor and was on the phone with me. I just had a moment, and then he told me I needed to get my head on straight.
“I said to myself, ‘I can’t control what’s going on. I’m here for a reason. We’ll take it one day at a time.’ I didn’t know if I was going to live or die, honestly. I didn’t know my prognosis was going to be so good. I got my head on straight and said a prayer, and from then on I had the strength. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“It was a life-changing experience,” she admitted. “I’ve had more blessings than anything along this entire journey. I had the leukemia that was 95 percent curable.”
Traci’s husband, Jimmy, traveled to Miami to be near her. He was allowed to visit every other day while she received blood transfusions and began her leukemia treatment. When she was discharged 14 days later, he drove her overnight, home to North Carolina.
“My oncologist in Miami was very adamant about four weeks of induction treatment, and that I’d have to go straight from Miami to Forsyth Medical Center,” Traci said. “I arrived about 7:30 in the morning, and my family and closest friends were all awaiting my arrival.”
Once she arrived at Forsyth Medical Center, she took her first shower since before she checked in at the ER in Miami, and settled into being closer to home. “It was a great experience at Novant Health,” Traci said. “Everyone was wonderful there. Even the cleaning people and the people who would wake me up in the middle of the night to check my blood pressure. Everyone was just precious.”
After two weeks of treatment at Forsyth Medical Center, Traci was able to pick up her treatment regimen back home in Mount Airy. Treatments were five days a week, four weeks on, four weeks off. She completed her treatment in October 2021 and continues with quarterly bloodwork follow-ups in Mount Airy.
Traci is back to her Peloton, working, volunteering in every corner of her community and grateful to celebrate her milestone 50th birthday in 2023.
“People around me had it a lot worse than I did. That stands out to me most,” she said. “Secondly, life can change in the blink of an eye. So always say your ‘love yous’ and forgive every single day of your life because you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring.
“I’ve always tried to not sweat the small stuff. But even more so now. I always loved hard and deep. Now I love harder and deeper. It’s all magnified even more now. I want to change the world and make a difference even more than before I was diagnosed,” she said. “I hope I can use my journey to bless someone else. I’m thankful for all of it – the highs, the lows. The setbacks, the comebacks. Now I’m on the comeback.”
