I hope you're sitting down.

Ed and I just got back from a consultation with my attending oncologist. I'll tell you right now that the meeting ended with her saying, "I'm sorry I had to give you guys this news."

Here are some facts that have never been seen in my prior tests:

1) My cancer cells are mutating at an alarming rate. There are chromosomal inclusions and exclusions being seen in the bone marrow, bone samples, and they're freely circulating in my bloodstream. She says these cells are "80% involved", which I take to mean that 80% of them are mutants of mutants.

2) My blood numbers are increasing and are not responding to normal chemo treatments.

3) She is proposing doing an allogeneic transplant instead of an autologous transplant. Unfortunately I don't have any suitable family donors, so we'll have to go out to a stranger. This means we're throwing the dice needing to make our point. There is an 80% chance of morbidity, mortality, or severe "quality of life" issues. Yeah, 1 in 5 comes out of it normally.

4) She is seeing a significant increase in affected areas of the bone. There is evidence of bone necrosis in my jaw already, which is sometimes the case in this disease. Basically the jawbone dies because of blood supply issues and, well, you can guess what the results are.

5) Several other areas of bone loss are evident, including areas of my spine, legs, and arms. Acropolis is crumbling from the inside. I should probably begin to limit my exposure to high physical stress.

So here's the plan, if you can call it that.

A) They'll put a Hickman Catherter in me tomorrow morning.
B) They'll put me in the University of Washington Hospital on Thursday.
C) They'll put some Melphalan (60mg?) in me to kill some bone marrow.
D) They'll let me out of the hospital 24-48 hours later.
E) They'll see if the newly restored bone marrow is cleaner than what I have now.
F) If the numbers improve as a result of the Melphalan, they'll do a harvest.
G) If the numbers don't improve..... we didn't exactly discuss that part.

So, procedure tomorrow, hospital Thursday, out on Friday, feel like crap from Friday to Tuesday, get more investigative procedures later next week, guess and ponder.

Oh, did I mention that Ed has to be gone during this particular time? Yeah, it's something we can't change. I just have to deal with it.

Here's what it boils down to. There's an 80% chance I'll never work or play again. EIGHTY FREAKING PERCENT. No more pride of accomplishment, no more motorcycles, no more home improvements, no more nothing other than watching Oprah and getting fat on the couch. No trips, no adventures, no real life.

Sorry to be so morose, but it's depressing.