Leukemia for dummies

Ok, so imagine that you are a red blood cell, and you share a three bedroom apartment in a prime location in the city with your buddies White blood cell and Platelet. You all make awesome roommates because everyone is good at tackling different tasks.  You make sure the place is always clean, White blood cell is really great at protecting the apartment, and platelet is a champ at home repair.

Now, at some point along the way, White blood cell starts hanging out with a rough crowd. More White blood cells, but these guys are bigger and also a little strange looking. Eventually WBC invites a few of his friends over. Then they invite more friends over, and then those guys invite their friends over. Eventually there is no place to sit anymore because these giant freaky white blood cells are taking over your apartment. Eventually Platelet says "Eff this!" and stops fixing things around the house, and there are now so many white blood cells trickling through the door that it becomes impossible to clean.

After a very short time, it becomes clear that there is only one definitive way to get rid of your shitty roommate and all of his unwanted house guests. Kill the White blood cells. Kill them all. It ensures that your prime real estate will continue to exist but there are definite risk factors involved. For one, with all of the WBC's now out of your life there won't be much to stop other crappy house guests from intruding such as Infection, or that d-bag from down the hall Illness. If they get in then they sure as hell won't be leaving without putting up a fight. Additionally, in order to completely eliminate these guys you might need to go to some pretty extreme lengths by using some unconventional poisons. These poisons could very well result in you and Platelets elimination. It's certainly risky, and definitely tough on the existing property, but absolutely necessary.

Now, after about 6 weeks of pumping poison through the window non stop, the WBC's are all dead. The front door is wide open, and the gate is unlocked, but the WBC's are certainly out of your hair. It's time to rebuild. You and Platelet return and find a new room mate. This one is also named White blood cell, but he seems like a nice enough guy and doesn't have a ton of hard partying friends. He's just OK at the security thing, and every once in a while you catch a rogue WBC trying to sneak through the door so intermittently over the next 2-3 years you still have to pump some of that poison in just to keep them away. After that you should be lucky enough to be done with those oafish WBC's for good.

Of course I realize that this analogy is a bit ridiculous. It's honestly the best way I could think of to describe what is currently going on inside Brooklyn's body. She is in fact being rapidly attacked by her own cancerous white blood cells. The goal of phase one is to "kill them all" putting her into remission. Every other subsequent phase is simply in place to keep them away for good.