Catastrophe!

Today began with one kind of catastrophe and ended with another. After all the preparations I had made, my laptop died sometime in the night. I called Apple at 7am, and got an appointment with the local Apple repair store for 10:20.

I couldn't imagine spending days in the hospital with no email, no broadband, no TV, no games, nothing! So, I admit, I told the young man at the store of my predicament.

In less than four hours they had replaced the logic board in my laptop and given it back to me, a record in modern computer service. There were other consequences, because some essential software is keyed to the board and had to be reauthorized. I also lost nearly the entire morning and a good part of the afternoon, which would otherwise have been given over to packing and final preparations, but it was UNTHINKABLE to begin a transplant without Internet access!

Then the H-bomb dropped. My transplant doc called with the news that the preliminary results of my bone marrow biopsy were considerably worse than anticipated, so much so that the transplant is off for now.

The point being, with a high percentage of plasma cells in the marrow (I think I heard him say 67%) as well as other problems, if we went forward we would probably not achieve the result we wanted. Instead, it is time to rethink. We should have the results of the DNA-level testing at the end of the week, which may help determine what course of action to take next. The strategy is to do what we have to do to improve the numbers, even if that means doing some rather cruel chemotherapies I have thus far been able to avoid.

In short, the transplant has been postponed for perhaps a couple of months, and I have to restart the steroids immediately to hold the disease at bay. We will get the full biopsy results next week, do some thinking, and chart a new course.

Meanwhile, I am officially and completely exhausted. But I will have more to say after some rest, so stay tuned.