Good News!

My leukemic counts are down! They have gone from 20% blasts to 8-10%!!!!! Nothing short of a miracle! My prayers, everyone's prayers, have been heard. I am so grateful! Excited! Relieved! I can have a transplant.  I am forever indebted to Marty Tallman at Memorial Sloan Kettering whose suggestion to use Azacitidine for 10 days might well have saved my life. I am forever grateful to Marty and Panos Kottaridis at the Royal Free Hospital for not giving up on me.

What I'm to do next isn't clear. I suppose I will start a next round of Azacitadine tomorrow while preparations for a transplant get underway. I imagine that if the counts remain how they are I will have a FLAMSA transplant and if they continue to lower I will have a Reduced Intensity Conditioning transplant. I pray my donor is feeling well, still willing and available. He or she is an angel.

I thank everyone for your love and prayers.  I too have really learned to pray through this.  I feel like I have a relationship with God or goD or gOd, Buddha, Jesus, Allah, The Great Spirit, all the beauty in the world, in nature, in flowers, in my incredible children and sweet husband. And all my friends-- you are varied, vast and strong. Tireless givers and open. You are inspirational, dedicated and fun and funny.  Oh, and REALLY supportive. Did I say kind?

I now have been gratefully re-given the sense of "time". I fully understand that tomorrow is a mystery. Of course, true enlightenment would be staying always in the beautiful moment--the only thing we truly have. The present is the gift. But it is HARD HARD HARD to know that!!!! I don't know how anybody does it. I just know that I've been given some breathing room. 

People thrive on hopes and dreams and if you don't have a sense of the future then those hopes and dreams are nothing.  I know it's all just a fantasy anyway, because this moment is the only real thing, but I need hopes and dreams and plans. I'm for sure, not enlightened. But that's OK. Somewhere there must be a balance. How to hope, yet stay present, how to dream, but not miss this moment.  Human is so complex.