Another sad day

I noticed another Anchorage teacher just recently passed away due to cancer.  I didn't know her but she was very young, a teacher of high school students for just two or three years.  I noticed my reaction to this sort of tragedy has changed dramatically over the past two years.  We all mourn at the passing of someone, especially somebody so young who should be looking forward to a long and wonderful life.  Everyone is saddened by such a tragedy.  Everyone asks why?

I've met cancer face to face, spent day after day, week after week and even worse, minute by minute suffering due to this filthy disease.  I tried to match each minute of pain with my own minute of adamant defiance and a vow to beat my cancer and take back my body and my life.  At times, my struggle seemed to go on without an end in sight.  The attacks were relentless without any sign of weakness in my enemy.  My battle was and still is deeply personal.

When a young, beautiful person is taken, I feel a visceral hatred and even anger to an enemy that I know all too well.  For all of us, it's a very sad day.  For me, it's also a loss to an adversary who represents an unmerciful evil, an evil against all of us.  Someday, we'll beat cancer completely.  Until then, it will hurt as many of us as possible, young and old, no mercy.  My dream is to grab cancer by the throat, and put an end to it's miserable life.  It will happen, just not soon enough.

Lollipop?

The details for the next Seattle Cancer Care Alliance appointment are beginning to fall in place.  Since I had two transplants and the second was the big one, the date of that transplant is a very important day to remember.  The next appointment is meant to fall on the first year anniversary of that date.  They call it a birthday.  It's the day I took on the stem cells of a total stranger and eventually accepted his bone marrow and blood as well.  November 6, 2015 was the day of my allogeneic transplant.

The follow-up appointment will last four days starting on November 7.  I know they will pull some more bone marrow from my hip.  This will be the eighth time for that procedure.  They will poke around, looking for problems and hopefully not finding anything.  On the last day, before I race back to Alaska for an evening symphony rehearsal, they plan to give me a redo of my immunization shots.  Since I have new blood, all immunity shots went away with my former blood.  The last time I received those shots, I remember receiving  a sugar cube and a lollipop.  I may be setting my hopes too high but I firmly believe going through a stem cell transplant and getting sick for several month due of the transplant deserves another lollipop.  We'll see.

Good News!

The oncologist appointment on Monday was in part intended to reveal the MRI results.  Specifically, is there a tumor on a rib in my back?  For some reason, the MRI didn't take pictures of the ribs in my back.  Instead, it did a full scan of my spine, which I'm glad to say doesn't have a tumor.  Regardless of the lack of information, I'm not worried.  The pain has finally reduced this week and tumors only get bigger and cause more pain so I don't have a tumor.

In other news, the doctor also gave me results of a monoclonal spike test.  It measures cancer in the blood.  When I started this process almost two years ago, the score was about 7.8 which is pretty high.   A few months of chemotherapy in Anchorage brought it down to 2.6 but it would not go down any further.  The first stem cell transplant reduced it to 0.2.  Last June, it was 0.1 and now, it's 0.0!!

Getting zero on a test score has been something I have feared for all of my life.  Getting zero on this test is best news I've had in months.

Dreams

I just woke up, dreaming of living in the small apartment in Seattle again.  The foggy dream was full of despair and even fear.  It was about sickness, misery and finally, hope.  The dream showed people passing away from the same illness as mine.  I once again felt the pressure of the dark side of cancer, insisting that I give in and allow it to completely take over my body and soul.  

Then, as before, I also felt the same comforting hope with an absolute certainty that I would survive.  That hope was my security during treatment.  It kept me positive and it may have kept me alive.  I viewed all of the sickness, all of the pain and all of the relentless nausea as a temporary delay to achieving full health.

I understand why these dreams are coming back.  My temporary sickness is just a cold or flu but for some reason, it seems much worse than it used to feel.  It involves shaking from extreme chills, followed by a high fever, popping in the chest and other standard symptoms.  This isn't really worth reporting but for some reason, the cancer doctors would send me to the hospital if they knew of my current condition.  I'm also faced with the question of a possible tumor on a rib in my back.  That explains the "fear" part of the dream.  I'll see the MRI results on Monday.

I suppose that my current high fever makes me somewhat delirious and therefore not responsible for my own actions or words.  I should take advantage of that by emailing people to tell them what I really think.  But it's almost 4:00 am.  I'll let the security of hope and the positive energy of my own resilience put me back to sleep like a warm quilt and a hot tea on a cold evening.

Retirement?

I believe this will be my last year of teaching.  

After thirty-five years in a field where perfection or even true mastery is just an imaginary and unobtainable goal, it may be time to try something else.  I thought I would have it down by now and retirement would happen after it becomes old hat.  The truth is, I'll never be satisfied with my own job as a teacher and I'll never reach a level where I can't improve.  Those who think they have reached that level are wrong.

Energy is still an issue for me.  Fatigue after a day of working with students and trying to connect in a way that is meaningful is still my greatest health issue.  They say my body is still getting used to having new blood from a stranger.  It is supposed to sap energy and cause all kinds of illness.  The illnesses are fading but the energy issue is something that I can't seem to beat.  

In spite of these depressing thoughts, I feel extremely lucky to be alive.  I'm still looking forward to the certainty that I will be completely cured of myeloma.  I've worried about sickness for too long. 

Steiner Celebration of Life

The celebration of life for Carl Steiner was just posted.  It will be Friday, October 21 at the Deming Log Show.  I will hopefully be able to attend and combine my trip with appointments at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.