"Shine a light" The Rolling Stones

And I'm wonderin' what it is I should do,

It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,

Losin' control, yeah I'm all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me,

Jokers to the right,

Here I am Stuck in the middle with you

Rafferty/Egan

It is not that I think of my doctors as clowns and jokers. It is just that we are all working in a herky jerky dark comedy as we roughly pull the biological levers of a graceful and delicate system that we are trying to force to obey our will. 

I will soon be making some major decisions, with less than perfect knowledge. So I have decided to get the best expert advice I can and read up on the latest thinking and most recent studies that apply to my circumstances. Be prepared. Shine a light.

I am off to ASH (American Society of Hematology) conference in San Francisco to meet the gurus and read the papers. As a bonus I get to stay with my daughter and son-in-law in Berkeley.

And then I will consult Dr. Kipps at UCSD and my local doctor, Sanjay Sharma before the year is out.

And probably a quick trip to the east coast to get third and fourth opinions from Kanti Rai and Ken Miller in January.

I will make several attempts to predict the best of all possible futures.

At least that's the plan for now. It may change after my bone marrow biopsy and CT scan next Monday. There is much at stake. As a friend said, I hear the drumroll. Show time! Let us hope there's no rimshot this go around.  I already have had my share of my cosmic humor: being too healthy with too robust a bone marrow and immune system to allow my graft to take hold. What hubris.

What does sadden me is how head long and deeply I have had to dive back into the murky waters of CLL and transplant medicine just when I thought I had reached the shore and was lazing on the beach in the sun.

As I do my research, I hope what I will find makes it hard to keep my smile from my face.  I will smile come what may, but it wouldn't it be great if it came easy.