Day 14, Monday, February 11th, 2013

The phone rang at quarter after nine. It was Jerra, my scheduling coordinator, calling to make sure that we knew that our appointment that morning was in an hour. This was handy, because I was pretty sure that it was at ten forty-five - crisis averted! We were already up and about ready to go, so it only altered our plans in the slightest way.

Ten-fifteen AM saw us sitting in room 19, on the sixth floor of the SCCA (I told you that would come up a lot), waiting for Kerry, my PA, to show up. Remember the crabby nurse from last week? She was back, and in a significantly better mood. I think I may have judged her unfairly; possibly she'd been having a really terrible day on our last go-round. She entertained us for a few minutes, then Kerry arrived, and we discussed the results from my biopsies and scans.

The good news is this: everything's clean.

My PET came back spotless, my bone marrow is pristine, there's nothing in my CNS, my heart is healthy, my lungs are expansive, and the high dose pills are fixing the low vitamin D. I am still in complete remission from my aggressive, transformed, non-Hodgkin's, circulating T-cell lymphoma. This is, of course, wonderful news. It means, in general, that my treatments will be simpler and gentler, and recovery will be swifter, with less complication. The full-allo transplant, with its harsher side effects, is off the table.

There really isn't any bad news; I am going to have to wait an extra week for a decision to be made on my treatment plan, because my skin is confusing things. I still have all of the symptoms I've had for years, and the SCCA just wants to be thorough before a course of action is pursued. I approve of thorough, even if it does mean that I am going to get my skin biopsied again. I see a dermatologist on Thursday, and her input will likely decide if I get a tandem transplant, just an auto, or just a mini-allo. There's even a small (very small) chance that I won't even need to get a stem cell transplant.

After all of that pleasantness, I had to go down to blood draw and give them a couple of vials for my weekly workup, and then Mom and I tried the cafeteria in the Arnold building of the Fred Hutchinson research centre. It was quite good. The rest of the day was pleasantly uneventful, except that I had an epiphany and realized that since almost no one ever seemed to be using the shared desktop computers on the second floor, no one would mind if I yoinked one of the network cables and plugged my laptop into it. I did this thing, and it was very satisfying.

 Two fish are in a tank. One turns to the other and says, "You man the guns, I'll drive."