And Then I Got Cancer

Out of the hospital, that is. That's one of the ways being in the hospital is like being in the military. Things are either happening very fast or very slow. There doesn't seem to be anything in between. I had stopped paying attention to my cell counts when I went a couple days without needing a transfusion. Also when I had a longer list of things that annoyed me at University hospital. But every day Dr. Smith, the attending on the bone marrow transplant team, came to see me, he would tell me I looked "too healthy to have leukemia." He was the first to express doubt about my biopsy results that sent me to the University in the first place. So when he came in to tell me the latest results were showing that I was actually in remission, he followed that up with asking if I wanted to go home. Heck yeah I wanted to go home. Not be woken up at 2am? And again at 4am? Not have to call someone to ask for a gown so I can cover myself before going for a walk? Not be constan

I'm in remission. I think. They think. I think I mentioned that the doctors here at University hospital repeated the last bone marrow biopsy I got, the 14 day biopsy after the FLAG-IDA chemo. I think that was last Wednesday. Most of the results are in from that biopsy, and it shows no signs of leukemia cells. Which is puzzling, since the biopsy I had less than a week before showed I was still at 10 percent. Apparently, especially with FLAG-IDA, the chemo can have a kind of delayed effect. So even though the chemo had done its work and was out of my system, the leukemia cells took a while to actually die off. This is great news. But, I don't want to get too excited yet. The next thing that happens is ANOTHER BONE MARROW BIOPSY. They want to do it tomorrow. This would count as the 28-day biopsy. They also called it something like a recovery biopsy. It's the one they do when cell counts have recovered and you can look at the bone marrow to see what's growing back. If