We All Live in Limbo

The last three weeks have been busy ones. To re-cap, briefly:
Bethesda/Boston January 11-19th. Overnight the night before departing in Spokane with Tom & Mary McFarland and dinner at our favorite local "hole in the wall" - Gordy's Szechuan/Thai. NIH: 36 tubes of blood (new personal record), bone marrow, 24 hour urine collection, Clinic, last round of vaccine. Dr. Bishop removed all my food restrictions, except rare hamburger. (but Sushi is OK!) They doubled my dose of Thyroid - I'm still low, but coming up! Dinner with Chinky, Jerry and Darlene. Seattle Seahawks vs Redskins and dinner at Sharon and Peter's. Rode Dave Scott's Trek bicycle down to DC. Can see more along the Potomac this time of year - no leaves on the trees. Bitter cold and windy in Boston, but the lamb was warm and delicious at Isabella's, one of Mom & Dad's favorite restaurants, with Tom and Britt from California, and Lorna up from NYC with Masha, Lindsay and "little" Richard. Lorna reminded me that I owe her dinner at one of NYC's fanciest Sushi places. I will gladly pay off this debt! George canceled the skiing at Stratton, VT - "very icey" - so we hung out Tuesday in Wellesley and had Chanx for lunch! Back to Bethesda. Thursday more blood tests, Pulmonary Function Tests, Clinic and then the 10 hour trip home to Sandpoint. Bram picked me up, he was home to have the recent "dings" in his truck fixed, and to spend a weekend backcountry skiing at Schweitzer with his new girlfriend, Brenda, a pretty redhead, quiet but outgoing, sweet, and helpful. They seem to be very much in love - which is the way it should be! Busy two days before we headed for Port Angeles: Gary, Pat, Kathy & Phil over for Indian food - MC's cooking at its best! Organizational meeting of Friends of Sandpoint Airport, Aviation documentary "16 Right", and lots of good ideas for promoting our Airport. My airplane, 31P, still in its Annual. The landing gear is going to be like New.
This last week in Port Angeles house/niece sitting for MC's sister Peggy. We picked Celina (the niece) up at Joe and Michelle's (caught the Seahawks-Carolina game). Hasn't been too rainy, for here. It's interesting living with a teenager again - "sneaking" healthy food into her, limiting the time on the telephone, attending junior high basketball games, tolerating the Rapp music, the make-up, etc. She's actually a good kid. MC and I have been taking some nice long walks, and dropping in on her parents, Bill and Betty. We've done a couple of side trips with Celina: out to Neah Bay - the Makah Tribal Cultural Center and Museum and Cape Flattery (northwestern-most point of the Continental U.S.), and to Port Townsend - Bonnie & Joe and MC's weaving friend Elizabeth Merrill. Burne Hill buzzed over yesterday morning from Bainbridge and we had a nice bike ride together. Tonight Peggy gets back and MC and I will head for Julia and Tom's beautiful home on Orcas Island for a few days.
The Bone Marrow report was a little disturbing. It was read by a different Pathologist than in August or October, and he noted "a few lambda staining cells" and read it out as "consistent with, but not diagnostic of, residual disease". I reviewed the slides with Jerry and the Pathologist who had interpreted the October marrow as "no evidence of residual Myeloma". She felt the current marrow was really "unchanged" and "normal". She felt that the lambda cells were "not significant". Dr. Bishop, the principal investigator of the Protocol I'm enrolled in, maintains that the bone marrow is "imprecise", and that I am still in "complete remission", because all my biochemical markers for Myeloma are negative. So who knows? I'd certainly prefer to believe I'm "cured", but the fact is that I have to remain in complete remission for at least two, and probably three, years, before that can be said with 95% confidence. Until then I know I live somewhat in limbo. Certainly I'm in a much better position vis a vis the Myeloma than a year ago. I'm on no chemo and, having received that last dose of vaccine, the immunity to the Myeloma that I received with Nancy's Stem Cells should be kicking into high gear, and killing any residual disease, if there is any.
The fact is we ALL live in limbo. We just learned this week that Matt Schaffer, Ethan's Dad, was just diagnosed with advanced, metastatic stomach or pancreatic cancer. Unless they can come up with a miracle chemo treatment, his outlook for survival is measured in weeks. When he was at our Christmas dinner a month ago he was the very picture of health. Friends, treasure your every moment!

Phil