Two Year Anniversary

Today I celebrated, not only the birthday of the country of my birth, Canada, but the second anniversary of my hematopoietic stem cell transplant.

I am grateful to be here and so well. Others were not so blessed.

I have managed to avoid much of the grave toxicity of treatments which have knocked back my CLL and my fearsome complication of low platelets with a minimum of side effects using my most "unorthodox" approach as described by Dr. Kipps.

Yet I get tired of all this dancing around to avoid heavy duty chemo and still keep the CLL/ITP at bay. My maneuvering has bought me almost 5 years But it hasn't been enough time to find the cure. Not even close. How about an orthodox therapy that will save my life and that of so many friends? The only option out there is still a transplant, and I am more and more realizing how lucky I am to have had such a benign if failed course after mine.

We are all tired of the waiting for the magic bullet, our own Gleevec, a relatively non-toxic very focused small molecule that revolutionized care for our cousin disease, CML. CML used to top the list of transplants. Not anymore since Gleevec.

We are all tired of dancing and are looking for a more healing partner than old school chemo.

Will it be CAL 101 or Revlimid or ABT? I doubt it, but they are strong moves in the right direction. I have hope.

In the meantime, what choice do we have? We dance on. After all it is my rebirthday and I am deeply thankful to be alive and writing this note.