Pleas for prayers please!

Hey,

It's me again. I guess I tend to blog in spurts but this one is mostly therapeutic for me. God works in mysterious ways, and He apparently thinks I need more challenge. And this may be the biggest challenge so far. My preliminary bone marrow biopsy results seem to show that my disease is one aggressive bastard mofo (30-40% blasts for those who this means anything) which transforms my disease from MDS to AML. This has me pissed. I am now sending out the Elite Special Forces Marines, you know, the ones that are psychotic and born that way! I am soon to be facing some high dose chemotherapy to get back into remission, but there is concern about the ever present CMV issue (which popped up positive again) and the state of my lungs. It would be great if the findings present on my chest CT scans would just go away because no one can guarantee that there isn't some brewing infection there. Everyone is curious to biopsy the lungs but any invasive procedure can be extremely dangerous for me at this point and may jeopardize my chance for a second transplant. I think I need the chemotherapy pretty soon, so please pray that all my doctors, me, and my family make the right decisions because timing is everything on this one.

On the bright side, the doctor I was hooked up with in Cleveland has turned out to be so wonderful and has been working above and beyond the call of duty, and I now have another experienced BMT doc on my team. Unfortunately for some, when the time comes, it looks like my second transplant will not be in Cleveland (Janet & Frank and Maria, I have to call you sometime. We were so excited to have you guys nearby.) I am being referred to the best of the best in umbilical cord blood transplants, which happens to be the U. of Minnesota, so that's where we plan to go.

Update on my bone marrow biopsy #9: I did receive sedation (Ativan and Demerol), and although it was the best biopsy experience I've had so far, it's been one of the sorest (is that a word?) after the biopsy. I guess there's a price for everything. I didn't grovel enough to take home that doggie bag... New environment... Threw me off my game... And Amy, if you are out there reading this, I am now neck and neck with you, but this is one race I'd gladly lose!

It is good to finally be an outpatient again, even if it's probably only for a couple of days. The plan is for me to go to medical short stay to get labwork and platelet transfusions until a decision is made on when to start chemo. I'll tell you... sleeping in your own bed with your wife next to you is like nothing else!

One final thing... I HAD to go to the driver's license center today to get my photo taken and get my license renewed. My license expires on Tuesday and I didn't want the hassle of dealing with an expired one. Fortunately, there is a center very close to our house, so Karen drove me there this afternoon. As we walk in there, a hundred other people apparently had the same idea, but we're thinking I had to get this done even though I'm taking a bit of a risk. Fortunately, the center is pretty spacious and it didn't end up taking too long. The funny thing is... the center looked like the UN. Seeing how Allison Park (where we live) is like 98.7% Caucasian (of course, I am exaggerating), we didn't know where all these people came from! There were all sorts of people in there, but I think I ended up being the most curious UN member. I was dressed normally, but having a surgical mask on gave me alien status. I was sitting in the back, and when they called my number, I walked confidently to the front desk with my mask on and I saw a hundred pair of inquisitive eyes! And this happened twice because I got my picture taken the first time and waited to pick up my card the second. A lot of people must have thought "TB!" because of that guy recently, or if they remembered far enough back, they might have thought "Asian guy! Bird flu!". So I tried to cough as much as possible throughout the whole process. Just kidding! That is no laughing matter kids. Under no circemstances should anyone accept those above mentioned serious diseases as payment for anything.

OK, I'm out. In all seriousness, please pray for Karen and me and our families about these upcoming days. I'd like to stick around to provide you with corny jokes and excruciating long self-deprecating blogs once every 3 months.

God's love,
Joe