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Feeling Good

So far so good, here we are on day 8 and I’m feeling pretty good. My levels have started to drop but are not down significantly and my energy is still relatively high, due in large part to my ability to remain active over the past week, that is my take anyway. Our numbers as a group have been growing again so I will repeat some of the important info for the benefit of the new members.

The Group History: I started this email group during my first week in hospital, I believe my first message was sent on the 11th of November, somewhere around that time. My intention was to ease the requests for information being placed on me, as I spent much of my first few days in hospital on the phone which was extremely tiring in my weakened state. So we began with around 20-30 people and today we are over 120 members if I’m not mistaken. Some of the essential information that I communicate is my progress, my strategy, and of course my feelings and crazy random thoughts, which are my favourite thing to pass along.

My Strategy: I have never fought Leukemia before so I figured an alternate plan was in order and considering I have played hockey my whole life, I figured that I would have more success approaching my situation as a hockey play-off series. I informed my Doctors that I was not fighting Leukemia, but that I was playing a hockey series, the most important series of my life. The similarities were significant, there are several ’rounds’ of treatment/chemo and these would be individual games and true to form you never know exactly how many games will be in a series. Same thing here as I don’t know how many rounds of chemo I’ll have. Today we are playing Game 3. Sometimes I will write using hockey analogies, but I seem to be doing that less and less these days.

My Progress: Has been good, we/I achieved remission just before XMAS, after the first round of chemo which is a significant accomplishment. I had a great XMAS, one of the best ever, and returned to hospital for Game 2 on Jan. 2nd, Game 2 lasted approximately 40 days while Game 1 took 38. The days are counted from the first day of chemo till my blood levels officially return. By blood levels I mean, hemoglobin – responsible for much of my energy, platelets – blood clotting, and white cells – my immune system, the most important element of my white cells are my Nutrophils. The levels of each drop significantly as a result of chemo and then my body builds itself back up, thus each game essentially represents one full cycle. As I mentioned today is day 8 of Game 3 and this time I have received two new drugs, as opposed to the first two rounds of chemo which saw me get the same drugs over a seven day period, this round was only 5 days. Just a different treatment schedule. I find that many people think of chemo as just one universal drug, but in actual fact it is many different poisons and the challenge is to find the best combination of poison for each Cancer. Presently long term cure of Leukemia with just chemotherapy stands at about 20%, which aren’t great odds. Of course a transplant significantly increases these numbers to around 70% long-term cure – 5 years is considered a long-term cure by the Doctors, but that seems a little short-term for me. I will get in more detail regarding the numbers and my options later as right now I’m not prepared to talk about it, but soon I hope.

My Crazy Random Thoughts: I will write most anything that is on my mind and you are not obligated to read it or respond, but if you wish to do both you are more than welcome. Some times my messages will be simple updates other times I will describe my thoughts and thought processes, it will vary tremendously. I will try to write every few days, but sometimes I will not touch base for a while. I may be feeling poorly or just don’t feel like writing either way hang tough and know that I haven’t been thrown anything I couldn’t handle. I feel as confident as ever in my ability to handle whatever comes my way next.

There you have it, a nutshell version of this email group, which I refer to as, My Friends. Back to present day, I’m doing well and will hopefully manage to stay infection and fever free for the next couple of weeks until my blood rises to healthy levels. There are no guarantees, kind of a wait and see situation. But going day to day as I do, I’m great today and that’s all that matters. Still loving the home cooking and my own bed, the little things are still the highlights of the day, and a mid-afternoon drive was the most enjoyable part of today. Hope everyone is doing well and I’ll touch base soon. Promise.

Take Care,

Geoff
#4

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