Cool Story (and update)

I thought this was a really neat story:


It was published in the Baltimore Sun recently. It's written by a volunteer who takes stem cell and bone marrow transplant material across the country and even across the world.


Stem Cell Transplants come in two varieties -- "auto," which means the patient's own stem cells are removed and then reintroduced after heavy chemo (one hopes) has wiped out all of the cancer; and "allo," which means a patient must find a match and then have the new cells from the donor introduced after the chemo. Sometimes, the patient can get an allo stem cell match from a family member. Otherwise, they need to go to an international stem cell donor directory to find one. There are about 5 million people on the registry waiting to help.


The author of the story tells some tales about the problems of traveling (it's a story from the Travel section of the newspaper), but it does its job of publicizing how important these couriers are.


Read it here.


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Peter was in a regional spelling bee yesterday. He won his school's 6th grade spelling bee, so he went to the regionals. Unfortunately, he lost. If he'd won, he would have gone to the state bee.


He came in 5th place, which was very good, but he was disappointed. He knew the word that he missed.


To give you a sense of how hard the sixth grade words were: the 4th and 5th grade bees both lasted over an hour. The 6th grade was just under 15 minutes. Peter was knocked out in the 4th round, and the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place finishers all got knocked out immediately after him.


We were there for the whole thing, including the 4th and 5th grade bees. It all took a lot longer than we expected it to, and sittiong around for two and half hours probably didn't help the sixth graders. John fell asleep for a half hour. We got Catherine a snack -- a six pack of Oreos. She ate the cookie parts and sculpted small animal figures from the creme filling, and played with them to keep herself busy.


Which was disgusting.


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I go for my scan tomorrow.


I thought it was going to be another CT scan, which takes about 5 minutes, but I looked at the instructions again, and it says it's a PET scan, which means 30 minutes in the machine, plus an hour of sitting around without moving while the radioactive barium milkshake makes its way through my veins. Fun times ahead.


As with my previous scans, I have no idea what to expect for an outcome. I feel pretty good overall, though I've had one nagging illness or another since New Year's Eve, so it's hard to know now whether I'm really feeling "normal." The cluster of nodes near my hip that's been swollen for a year seem a little more swollen to me, but it might be a reaction to lingering illenesses, or it might be the lymphoma, but not enough to worry about.

Basically, it's all just the usual pre-scan anxiety.


Whatever will be, will be. I'm prepared for whatever the results are. As I've said before, there's really nothing they can say to me that will be a shock at this point.

I'll have results in a few days when I hear from Dr. R. I see him on Friday, but he's usually pretty good about calling with results once he gets them.