I know, it’s been quite a long time since I’ve written. As usual, that’s good news because it means I’m busy living life. I am on week 6 of my third round of the clinical trial and I have a bone marrow biopsy on Thursday. This will be the first one since November. I know that everything should be fine, but I’m still a little nervous. My body has responded well to this round of the trial. My last blood check showed my platelets over 110,000! My white count should be coming up this week. I tend to be neutropenic the 4th week of the trial and by the start of the 7th week, it is closer to normal. The count continues to come up the week that they are giving me chemo and then starts dropping again around week 3. Next week I should have chemo again, which will be the start of round 4 and officially the half-way mark! Only 4 cycles left after that.

I have been feeling pretty great overall. Most importantly, aside from my hair (which I hate!) I feel NORMAL. I have been running 2-3 miles twice a week, weight training and doing hot yoga. Things that were challenging a few weeks ago feel fluid and easier now. I still have energy lulls on the first and second week following chemo, but I feel like my body is starting to adjust to it. Mentally, I am starting to have more days that I don’t think about cancer than days that I do. Every once in a while I read an article or see a news story that reminds me how serious it is and about the fact that it can come back. I try to avoid those things, but I also know that everyone is different and I try to remain focused on the other things I plan to do with my life besides face cancer.

I actually read an incredible article today about a doctor who has virtually found a cure for another type of leukemia called CML (I have AML). CML stands for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, where I have (had) the Acute form. In this case, the doctor was able to identify the actual genes that cause CML and develop a medicine (literally in pill form) that ultimately deleted the genes from the body so that they could no longer produce the cancerous cells that caused the disease. Like I said, the only way to describe it is “incredible.” They give the example of people being diagnosed in their 60s, now living into their 90s and dying of other issues, not the leukemia. I would happily take 30 more years of life, but hopefully much longer!!! The article is very long but worth reading if any of this is of interest to you or you know anyone affected by leukemia: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/A-Victory-in-the-War-Against-Cancer.html. This doctor is beginning to do research to try to treat AML in the same way. I can only pray that they find a cure like this should this ever affect me in the future.

So, as you can see, reading a story like this gives me great hope but once in a while a get nervous about the idea of this suddenly coming back without warning, much the way it showed up. Although I have always considered myself a healthy person, I can also see now how unhealthy I was in so many ways before all of this. I only hope that the daily changes I work on now are what it takes to keep this away forever. I hope this doesn’t sound negative, it’s just the reality of living with the disease. It is always tucked away in the back of your mind and the trick is to keep it there.