Good Morning All:

Mostly an update this time around but perhaps there will be items that will shock and astound you as I recap the past week and look ahead.

I believe that I've already detailed the fact that my recent bone marrow biopsy revealed cancer and that this would require a new chemo regimen. I'm now over half-way through that regimen. I was in the middle of the first three days of chemo when I posted last week. I can now safely say that those three days of treatment were the harshest I have experienced. Almost immediately I became fatigued. I got fevers each night during treatment and generally felt awful. The biggest surprise came on Tuesday last week when I learned that where I relapsed with a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, the ALL seemed to have been succesfully treated but when the marrow returned it was being crowded out by another form of leukemia, Acute Mylogenous Leukemia. So the treatment I am receiving is a standard AML treatment.

I was a little taken aback that my entire diagnosis had shifted and the means by which I learned of it was through an off-hand comment during rounds long after the treatment protocol had been settled upon.

I am now roughly in the middle of the second three days of chemo. Thankfully it is a different drug this time around. I would say that I tolerate this one more like I have tolerated past treatments . . . except . . . yesterday afternoon/last night was the worst 12 hours I have spent in the hospital. After a wonderful visit with my wife, kids, parents in the morning into the afternoon I started to develop a fever. The doctors were interested in learning something from this fever and so they did not want to give me Tylenol to break the fever. The result was a 12-hour ordeal where sleep didn't come and I was losing fluid so fast that it felt like I was a grape turning into a raisin.

Between 2:00 and 3:30, several things happened. I lowered the temperature in my room as cold as it would go. The doctor changed an antibiotic in my regimen, and my pleas for hydration were finally answered. By 5:00, the fever was gone.

I often wonder about the sleep-factor in my recovery. Nights like last night are frustrating on many levels, but the disregard of my need for sleep bordered on disturbing. At any rate, this final round of chemo ends tomorrow and then the waiting game begins. Hopefully my counts return and the marrow is clean. The goal, of course is to get to this point and then quickly move into a Bone Marrow Transplant soon thereafter.

As always, thanks for reading.

--Russ.