" I won't back down" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

As someone long prepared for the occasion;

In full command of every plan you wrecked –

Do not choose a coward’s explanation

that hides behind the cause and the effect.

Leonard Cohen

Dr. Wendy Harpham, who shares the wisdom and experience that only comes from having been on both sides of the stethoscope, suggests that there are other goals beside cure. Her stance is at the same time compassionate, realistic and courageous. But I ain't hearing any of it.

I am just not ready to go there. Heck, I just played Russian roulette with a very loaded gun of a matched unrelated donor stem cell transplant. This is the real deal. The point of the whole bloody exercise is not to break even. I could do that standing still. The point is to leave CLL dying in the dust after the new imported immune SWAT team that haven't been corrupted by cancer's clonal madness, worked it over but good. No hiding in the nodes or bone marrow for a later guerrilla attack, but fully gone. Kaput. Fini. That is why I picked up that loaded pistol of someone else's stem cells. I am wiling to accept collateral damage. I am not risk adverse. The stakes are for keeps.

Tomorrow I may get a better sense of how much further I need to go if I have not already arrived. All that may be left is the mopping up. Cure is the goal. if I'm not there I will be merciless in my pursuit of any lingering leukemic cells. If you don't give up, you're never defeated.

It's been said before: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The new immune system doesn't sleep, but I do, so until the good news tomorrow, I remain your faithful gonzo reporter from the cancer battlefield.