Badge of Awesome - "what almost dying taught me about really living"

My name is Josh Martin, and this is Badge of Awesome.

It was January 2008, and I was 27 years old. An annoying blurriness in my left eye finally convinced me to see an optometrist. It turned out that the insides of my eyeballs were bleeding. That can’t be good, I thought to myself.

Turns out I was right.

A blood test at my family doctor the following week revealed some
startling information. The normal amount of white blood cells in a healthy
adult male ranges between 4 and 11. Mine? 584.

Nope. Not good at all.

I had cancer. Chronic mylogenous leukemia to be exact. The doctors
gave me a 40 to 50 percent chance of surviving. Later I found out the odds
were more like 20 percent.

Damn.

That March, I spent a month in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, getting the crap kicked out of me by heavy-duty chemo. It sucked. But I was determined to do whatever was necessary to beat my cancer.