Day 133 - HOME!

Today was notable for more chemo; no problems; de-access the port; go home!

It is so nice to be home now. We stopped at Fred's Fish Daley and got some salmon. We thought it would be a good idea to tea-smoke chicken and grill salmon at the same time so the potatoes that were tucked under the salmon got chicken juice in them and tasted a little bit like chicken potato soup.  Not bad, but not what I had in mind. The salmon, however, was delicious as was the chicken.

Tommie stopped by to say hi after the Music Hall opera simulcast. It was nice to see her, of course. After dinner and Tommie, Terry and I went for a short walk through town and a person who was already preparing for the big storm by drinking a little extra told us he had a few more preparations to make to be completely ready for the storm. Fortunately, he was walking too.

A lot of people have asked me what the rest of the plan is for my leukemia so I'll tell you what I know now. There are a couple of different types of markers and we did not get some of them for me for complicated reasons I don't want to go into. We did get some of them, however. These markers are called cytogenetics and the idea is that a tech in a lab looks at your chromosomes and tries to see if there are any big breaks or segments that are switched with each other or flipped upside down. If this happens, a gene that says "grow, grow, grow" could get stuck next to a different gene's on-switch and the grow gene could get switched on permanently. This is, in a simplified form, what causes cancer, when one gene's on-switch gets attached to an incorrect gene. My cytogenetics were all normal. There are some breaks in the genes that are considered "good prognostics" and if you have those, you only get three rounds of consolidation because it is such wimpy leukemia. If I had had that marker, I'd be done now. There are some breaks that are such "bad prognostics" that you go straight to bone marrow transplant from some one else. I did not have that marker either. I am in the middle, with the rest of the great unwashed, and it is unclear exactly what to do with me.

There is a study in Ohio which has been collecting information to answer just this question. The options under consideration are 1) a fourth round of consolidation (so I'd have one more) 2) an auto transplant. Dr Hill has asked the people in Ohio to please tell him what they their data looks like preliminarily and they have not yet. He keeps joking that I will show up for my next appointment for surprise treatment. I think it's a funny idea, but I am sure he'll get it sorted out before I need it.

Assuming all goes well this consolidation (which I now know is not a good assumption), I will be ready for surprise treatment #4 around Nov 21. Likely, I will be in Leb for Thanksgiving; I never liked turkey anyway, but the sad thing is that I will miss Terry's open studio. Terry has been distracted this year, so it won't be his best ever so I guess that's a small comfort.

Given how smoothly today went for me, I am hoping for another smooth day tomorrow. I hope your tomorrow is as smooth as today, or if today was not so smooth, I hope it's smoother for you. Please be safe and keep your wits about you during the big storm.