I figured I haven’t posted many pictures of my adventure due to a number of factors. One being I didn’t have my digital camera with me. My backup option was an iSight video camera, which takes sort of blurry stills, and some effort to get the stills out. And then I was too tired to do all the work of adding images. So here are some sights of my cell:

My WBC is up to 0.8. No major news today. Since my counts leveled off I’m looking at going home later in the week, but they could still suprise me. I’d really like to go home, but I’m trying to be patient. I should actually get to do some coding today, which will be nice for a change.

Not much different from Christmas in prison.

I’m a little blue now. I miss watching Kassie open her presents and pontificate on that this is the best ever present. Kassie and Molly are coming by for a real short visit, but it should be great. I haven’t seen them in about 10 days now. I really hope they get here soon.

Anyway my white counts are creeping up to 0.9 so I’m guessing 12/28 for a release date, kind of like onto parole at home.

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.

White Blood Cell Counts are up

Great news today. After 8 days of waiting my counts have finally gone from less than 0.1 to 0.2 officially. So my stem cells are actually producing white blood cells again. I know they might go up and down a little from here, but this is great news. When they get to about 1.0 they let me go home and break out of my HEPA filtered prison. Home will then be the next great adventure.