Epic failure

I had an appointment with Dr. B. a little over an hour ago. It was a little strange because the nurse took my vitals and then Dr. B. came into the room by himself. No PA, no wait, nothing. Just blood pressure and Dr. B.

The conversation went quickly to this:

"Well, let's get right down to brass tacks. Your disease is coming back with a vengeance. Your numbers are twice what they were last month. You're running out of options quickly. We should have done the transplant yesterday."

Crap. Crap crap crap crap.

He showed me the numbers. Sure as hell, they're very close to being where they were before the autologous transplant. We wondered how much time the auto was going to buy me and now we know.

So let me throw in a few complications. Ed and I are going to attend a wedding in Banff, Canada on Saturday. I'm off on a 2 week motorcycle excursion this coming Monday. I return on June 17th. Ed and I have to be moved up to Vancouver before July 1.

In Dr. B's perfect world, I'd get a transplant in there somewhere.

So we've come to a logical and practical compromise. I'll take that strong, nasty stuff they call dexamethasone for a month while our life moves forward. I'll call the allogeneic transplant team tomorrow and get the ball rolling to prep and harvest from the donor. Meanwhile I have to keep from freaking out. The party's over. Time to do the hard stuff now.