Waiting for a Miracle

Somewhere out there is a place that's cool
Where peace and balance are the rule
Working toward a future like some kind of mystic jewel
And waiting for a miracle

Bruce Cockburn

Day 9+ (91 to go) 

The gravity of my radical course is pushing me forward. My counts remain strong, except for my disease fighting white cells. They are missing in action, along with all my antibodies. Like the Maginot line, my defences are useless. So I am counting on no attacks from sleeping germs within: Intestinal bugs picked up on my past travels in the not so hygienic Kyber Pass or the jungles of Honduras or the medinas of Morocco, or from routine childhood illness like chickenpox waking from there deep sleep as there is no guard at the door, and of course from all the exposure to snotty nosed kids and very sick grownups in my years as a family doc. I also am counting on no dastardly attacks from outside. Hence, the masks and gloves on all visitors and the positive pressure room and the food cooked to death. No plants hiding fungi. And all the preventive antibiotics.

The next hurdle is engraftment, which could start soon. The shorter my nadir, the better my chances. That Tom Petty line again : Waiting IS the hardest part.

My biology does have its own unstoppable momentum now. I will become chimeric (of two creatures) and eventually I will have only the shiny new 22-year-old cancer-free immuno-competent blood system. Cured. What I am doing now is refusing to get sick. My unexplained rashes and mild skin infections are tolerated, but I will accept no serious attacks on my nascent immune system. The window of vulnerability is shortening. My doc says every day without fever is another day in the bank.

I am waiting on a miracle, a miracle that will come to pass.