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My fluids

Sorry, this one isn't about urine. It's about cerebrospinal fluid. I said before that the preliminary results from my lumbar puncture seemed to look good, meaning no blasts in there. Dr. Patil said the fluid was crystal clear, which is good news. But Drs. Patil and Bowles came by a bit ago to tell me further investigation was inconclusive.

I guess the pathologist did see a small number of blasts in the sample. It's possible though that these blasts actually came from blood that was encountered as the needle was pulled out of the spinal column. The only way to know for sure of course is to do another lumbar puncture! Hooray!

Sounds like this will happen Friday. And this next time they will draw out more fluid, using a few different vials. If there are more blasts in the first vial, or some in the first and none in the last, they can say more conclusively that my cerebrospinal fluid is clear.

If they find that there are actually blasts in there, I will need Cytarabine in my spine just as much as I need it in the rest of my body. Which means I either get twice weekly spinal injections of the stuff, which I think would be pretty heinous (do people still say that?), or I go home with a port in my skull.

Maybe they'd settle for a tattoo.




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