Kassie drew a big heart on my come home calendar for Dec 23
Better news at 5am this morning. My WBC has skyrocketed to 0.8, so given this progression I should be at 2.0 or better tomorrow and they can release me to go home for Christmas. This is probably a bit of a pipe dream, but it feels like a possibility, I haven’t run it past my doctor yet.
Anyway I feel almost normal except for a new cough. I went down and got a chest XRay yesterday, and I managed to do the whole thing without blacking out. So far my lungs are clear.
I did see something yesterday to wrench me out my happy reality for just a momement. They wheeled out one of the other cancer patients who’s been here since 11/20 to take him down to XRay. He looked just beaten, sunken eyes, very yellow, no acknowledgement that he cared to go on with any more treatments. The sad part is this could have been me had things not worked out quite so well.
While I think it scares people when I mention it, if this NHL does reoccur again someday I really don’t think I’m going to be in favor of going through massive chemo followed my a stem cell transplant again. I think I’ve followed the onocologist prescribed options for a while, and if there is a next time I want to try clinical trials, or simply getting the disease back into remission with a minimimum of chemo or easier drugs like Rituxin. At some point your quality of life really counts. I can’t imagine these people I’ve heard who’ve been on chemo for 5 years or longer. I don’t know that I’ll hold to this prediction if the time ever comes, but I also think I’ve really beaten it back for good this time.