Day 138, Thursday, June 13th, 2013

News! Lots of news!

First, a minor thing, really a clarification: I may or may not have actually experienced any GVHD thus far - that actually remains to be seen. All of the issues I've had have been minor, and all of them could certainly have been caused by one or both of the immune suppressant medications that I have been taking: the previously discussed Tacrolimus, and the not-previously discussed Mycophenylate Mofeti, which, to me, sounds like a pretty good name for a United Nations Secretary-General (Boutros Boutros-Ghali, anyone?).

Second, I get to stop setting a thrice-daily alarm for the United Nations Secretary-General Mycophenylate Mofeti, because he is being phased out - by which, of course, I mean I get to stop taking the pills. One immune suppressant down, and one to go! I'd like to take a moment to pause, here, for you to appreciate how hard I had to work to not make an oral sex joke out of 'taking UN Sec-Gen Mycophenylate Mofeti by mouth three times a day'. Thank you for your time.

Well, maybe. If I get a sudden flare up of symptoms after I go off this stuff, then I go right back on it ("Why can't I quit you, Secretary-General Mofeti?"). So, fingers, toes, and any other prehensile appendages you may possess, crossed.

Third, my cell-mediated immunity is now approximately 99.5% Shiny. As of the bone marrow biopsy last Wednesday, Dad's T-cells have entirely replaced my own, and his Natural Killer cells comprise ninety-eight percent of detectable cells, and rising.

[Natural Killer cells are able to detect and kill cells stressed from viral infections, regardless of the presence of viral antibodies; they perform similar functions with tumours. The How of this is wonderfully complex, and we shall not dwell heavily on it, in favour of the news of the day.]

Now, I'm certainly not out of the forest of risk for GVHD, not by any means, but what the above does mean is essentially this:

I am cancer-free.

(Or if not, technically, I will be very soon.)

Do a little dance. Make a little love. Get down tonight.

I wish this were a better year for rhyming purposes, "cancer-free since twenty-thirteen" just doesn't have a ring to it.

Maybe... "Cancer-clean since twenty thirteen"?

I'll work on it.

About two o'clock in the morning, the Speaker of the House stood up on a table and said, "Gentlemen, we are sloshed. We are fried, oiled, canned, and in the bag cross-eyed. We are awash in tonsil paint, afloat on a sea of coffin varnish. We are swimming in stagger soup. We are lit, tight, stinking, bombed, and tanked with three sheets to the wind. In point of act we are drunk. And in point of more fact we are drunker than anyone has ever been. And in point of more fact than that we are drunker than anyone is ever going to get, because we've got a quorum right here, so let's go over and open Congress." Which they did, stumbling up to the Capitol building and unlocking the door. Then they called themselves into session and passed a law saying no one could ever get drunker than they were then, and that's where Prohibition came from, according to Fitzpatrick's father.

- an excerpt from Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut, by P.J. O'Rourke.