Mostly Mister Man

I have good news from my clinic appointment yesterday.

A little backstory: I had a biopsy last Monday and until yesterday, I had no news. My regular oncologist used to give me preliminary results within a couple of days. When I was in remission, we were on the "no news is good news" plan until the final results came back. Final results take about a week, but I always knew something within 48 hours or so, even if that something was a big nothing that allowed me to exhale a little bit.

Since I'm not familiar with the protocols of my transplant team, this past week had the potential to be thoroughly unnerving. When I had heard nothing by Wednesday, I called the office and asked what the procedure was. The secretary said, "The doctor will call you."

Okay, great. When? Does this mean that they saw something bad and they want to wait until they have more information before they tell me? On the other hand, wouldn't they want to start treatment right away if they saw something icky in there? Then again, maybe they can't figure out the treatment until they have final results anyway, so they might allow me to wallow in blissful ignorance for a few more days?...Blah blah blah blah.

Of course I have been through this shit a million times and I have dealt with good news and bad news and I'm still here to tell the tale. I have gotten better at not obsessing about test results. Still, the anxiety lurks; it's like fighting a bug. You feel it in the back of your throat. Someone said something really helpful to me a few months ago...even if it is bad news, if you spend today worrying about it, you pay now and you pay later, which is kind of a raw deal.

And so, I took heart in my good blood counts and my decent energy and the fact that I don't have giant black circles under my eyes. I barely rest during the day now, in spite of the fact that I don't sleep much. I have not needed a single transfusion since being released from The Slammer. Yesterday mom and I couldn't get a cab to the clinic, so we jumped on a bus and then practically ran from 60th and 2nd to 68th and York in the freezing cold (we were running late) and I barely felt it.

I can take heart in these things. Then again, when I relapsed, I was feeling great, and this is why the Cyclone presides over my blog.

Anyway, the results are excellent. Not only do I have NO evidence of disease (under 5% is considered clinical remission - I got nuttin') but further tests show that my cells are 99% donor cells, which means that Mister Man is really moving in and setting up shop. He's ordered a pizza because he's thinking he might stick around a while. With any luck, soon he'll bring in his big screen TV and his favorite chair.

Mom tells me the doc whispered, "this is amazing" to her as I was getting up on the table. Even the examination felt perfunctory and took about ten seconds.

This is the same doctor who gave me a statistic that scared me so much I was ready to jump off a bridge and be done with it. I won't quote the number because it's kind of too horrible to commit to writing.

None of this means I'm out of the woods. No chicken counting yet. I could have complications from the transplant ahead of me, and I could still relapse. The idea, though, is that Mister Man will soundly kick the ass of any Leukemia that tries to rear its ugly head. We have to wait, though, until all his boxes are unpacked and his clothes are in the closet and dirty laundry has started to pile up and the mail starts coming without the change of address labels on it. We can't get comfortable yet.

And maybe I'm never going to be comfortable. That's an open question for the future. Even "future" is still a scary word, though, which is why we must temper our enthusiasm and hope with realism and strong nerves.

I know I have today, though, and that's my immediate future. I have writing to do and scripts to read and food to think about and prepare and eat, and time to spend with mom cooking and eating and watching DVDs and missing Neal every minute.

Thanks and love and be well, everyone.