I thought about titling this post “biopsy negative!” but decided that could be misinterpreted, and “biopsy positive” could definitely send the wrong message, so I went with the primitive sounding “biopsy good”.

So this morning the doctors came in to tell me they didn’t find any signs of the leukemia in my bone marrow, so I’m back in remission. Now it’s a matter of waiting likely another 11-21 days (could be shorter, or longer), for my immune system to regrow enough to fight off infection on it’s own. Then, assuming I’m in good health (which seems likely right now, I walked three miles last night without difficulty), then I’ll head to Boston to begin the transplant process. I guess there’s a chance I could get a fever, as I did in the past, before my immune system is mature again, in which case that would delay things a bit, but once I’m strong and healthy we’ll try the transplant.

I’m nervous about the transplant process, there’s a lot of uncertainty, but in my favor are my age and health, and this is the best shot at curing me, or at least prolonging my life for a good while, so I’m also anxious to begin — the sooner it starts the sooner I’ll be able to work on recovering and finding out if it worked or not. And also the less likely the leukemia cells will regrow into a problem again.

I guess I could mention too, I’m at the stage where the later chemotherapy effects are starting to happen, my hair is just beginning to fall out, and my sense of taste seems to be changing again, though it’s hard to explain exactly how. In both cases they seem like relatively harmless effects, I’ve been lucky that my digestive tract has remained pretty healthy, and my mouth too. Sores in the mouth are a common symptom and so far I haven’t really had that, though a couple days ago my platelets were very low and I apparently accidentally bit my cheek while eating a cookie, and a blood blister formed right away. But I got a platelet transfusion the next morning and I’m not much of a bleeding risk again for now, and the blood blister is going away quickly.

Chris, the Creative Visual Artist for the Norris Cotton Cancer center, (where I’ve been treated all this time — which just reminded me, someone asked for my address and I forgot who…), asked me to share some of my photography for an artshow later in October, so I need to write up an artists’ statement and get a couple pictures printed, and framed, to be hung. That’ll be fun. And after I post this I’m going to go back to fiddling around with some programming ideas, see if I can get back into the programmer mindset.

Thanks for reading!