A Note to my Gentle Readers

Today I realized that I am assuming, when I write a post, that you, my Gentle Reader, has read all of the earlier posts from the beginning in January. For some posts, knowing the full corpus is prerequisite to full understanding, which is the point.

I could have attempted to write each post in a fully self-contained way, assuming nothing; however, when this blog began, it was intended to be an almost-daily diary of the experience of an autologous stem-cell transplant (aSCT). If you have been following along, then you know why it didn't turn out that way. For the newcomers, in a nutshell, I failed my last exam before transplant, the bone marrow biopsy, by having 60-70% plasma-cell infiltration of the marrow, which has led to a terrible and ongoing delay while we try to drive that number below a life-or-death 10%. As a result, the purpose of the blog has now expanded to cover the full experience of the battle and especially the End Game part of the battle, which may yet include a second aSCT if I'm lucky.

This blog is written for everyone fighting cancer but primarily for those of you who may experience an aSCT. If you know what it was like for me, you may find it less surprising and easier to bear. The only details I'm leaving out are some private conversations with my doctors and friends, lest they discover I've embarrassed them for all to see and decide to clam up. In the ideal world, there would never be negative consequences for truth telling: in this world, they poisoned Socrates just to shut him up.

The Death of Socrates

For now, Gentle Readers, I must beg your indulgence to ask you to go back to the first post and read it and the rest. I know that is a lot to ask, but necessary if I am to succeed in conveying the important parts of the End Game: if it turns out well, you can rejoice with me, but if ill, you will know how one man faced his end.

To help, I've temporary increased the number of posts displayed below to include all of them. I can't keep it that way for long because of the increased page load times it will cause.