Me.
The Drs called today and my marrow is clear. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer, to quote Burgess. There are no bad lymphoblasts and there is no cancer to be found.
In short: Yahoo!
These are still woods, and we are by no means out of them, but this initial good result sets a tone, I hope, and is one of the more important hurdles. 30% of people are resistant to chemo: I am not. Sometimes there's more induction chemo: not for me.
We can now move onto the next phase of the protocol to try and eradicate and keep eradicated this leukemia. If each benchmark goes well--which may or may not happen, but let's pretend on this happy day--then there are seven more months of different chemo regimens, followed by likely a couple of years of 'maintenance' therapy--which tends to be significantly less but still owns you--until I am released. And then the Medical Establishment demands five years cancer-free before they pronounce you 'cured.'
But that's the point on the horizon for which I am aiming, and this first smear of clear marrow points the way.
We have our next appointment Wednesday, and if my blood numbers are in the right place they may start me on the next round at that point. Or maybe wait a bit more. But it will be soon. They give you a break to get some strength back before hitting you again, but they don't want to wait too long, and I don't want them to--both because it means I will be done sooner and, of even more value, it means there's less chance the bugger will have a chance to regroup and regrow.
So...off we go into whatever's next.
I want to apologize for the two-day hole I fell in the other day, and I want to prep everyone out there for more pauses. But this time on purpose.
From now till Wednesday, nothing is supposed to happen. I am supposed to eat, sleep, and crap: baby time, puppy time, Republican think-tank time, call it what you will.
Partially because writing about nothing happening is often bad writing--unless you are Nicholson Baker--but more so because I respect your time as much as I understand the need to husband my own, I don't intend to blog sedentary-tude. That's just obnoxious: 'today my toes look better, but still sort of like Vienna Sausages,' blah blah blah. Obnoxious.
So we're going off radar unless something happens that warrants a report. No news will, in a very real way, be good news for the next little while.
I will definitely report at the end of Wednesday or during Thursday, depending on what they hit me with and everything. But probably not before that.
There's some good lacrosse on ESPN2 this weekend, NASCAR is at their home track in Charlotte, the Indy 500 is in about a day and a half, and the blue crab is probably coming into season if you are near Baltimore. Just ideas, you know.
So go see an art-house film, crank some Dio or Iggy Pop, or just mourn Gary Coleman, and I will speak to you all in a few days.
Faceless mass of unknown care that you are, I will miss you, oddly.
Later.
