End of an Era

A Mythical Magical Mix of Creatures: A Chimera

Today I learned that my chimerism test in my peripheral blood was 100% host and 0% donor.

This test measure the percentage of my blood cells that are from me and from Yaakov who generously gave his hematopoietic stem cells in a effort to cure my cancer a little over 8 years ago.

While this result was hardly a surprise as my last test over 6 years ago and done from my bone marrow was 3% donor and 0% of the important T cells.

And we all knew that sadly my transplant failed years ago precisely because I rejected the graft.

Now it is clearly documented that I am no longer chimeric. Remember that a chimera is a mix of two animals- a lion and a snake and hawk as a mythical example.

I am just me- not a trace of Yaakov in my bloodstream.

Some 8 years ago, I was, for a brief hopeful few months, both Brian and Yaakov, hoping to become 100% Yaakov in my blood, with the real chance that his healthy immune system would kill on my cancer forever. That I would be cured.

Sadly, that was not to be and I lost the graft and relapsed. That story and my subsequent challenges in controlling my CLL is the genesis and the guts of this blog.

Now that era is officially closed. I did the test as there are some cases of donor chimerism climbing when patients take ibrutinib. Not me. Probably because I  already was at zero donor when I started on PCI-3275 (AKA ibrutinib) 4 years ago.

The news makes me a tiny bit sad. It reminds of a more optimistic time when I thought I might be able to forever say goodbye to CLL. While I still harbor that hope, it is tempered with heavy dose of realism.

I will be forever grateful to Yaakov for his generous and selfless gift of a chance to save to my life. And offer me a window of such hope.
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Chimera

My 2 grown daughters as unicorns and my son-in-law as the Knight in shining armor on Halloween

My offspring are garbed as mythical creatures. Impossible animals that could never and will never exist.

And yet that is exactly what I am reaching for, having felt the breath of a mythical beast in my blood, having sensed the sway and swagger of a new consciousness finding its way through my tissues, and then felt it slipped away, and with it my chance at an early cure.

I miss being that chimera, that magical and doable mix of two life forms or two lives in one, me and my donor. I know it can be done. I have been there.

I will be that chimera again.

No, I will not become a fire breathing monster, equal parts lion. snake and goat. I will become double formed, from two sources flowing in one stream, not in any allegorical sense, but in the flesh. Like Shylock, prick me and I bleed, but you better check my/his DNA. I will be a changed man, a double agent.

The second time it will stick. It will be no myth, but it could be mythic.