Update

It is time to give an update straight from the P. E. area. Every cycle of my chemotherapy lasts four weeks. Monday was three weeks so I had a bone marrow biopsy to check my progress.

When I started the chemo I had these bad cells in my marrow measured at 21%. The bad guys are called "blasts" and they are red cells produced by the cancer that are larger than regular red cells, and they live longer. They crowd out the good cells so I end up with not enough blood. The goal of the first four-week cycle is to get the blasts measure down to 5% or lower. This state is called "remission." At this level of measurement my good stem cells can produce enough good blood that I can be out of the protective environment. From the biopsy Monday the blasts are down to 9%. There seems to be some hope that the blast measure will continue to decline this week. So I do not have a definitive report to give you. I will have another biopsy this coming Monday and it will determine what will happen next. I am unwilling to speculate what that will be.

The best case is that the blasts go down and I enter the "continuing" phases of my treatment. The goal of these phases is to continue to attack the cancer, but with doses of chemo that do not take my body so far down to need the P. E. So I ask you to pray that my blasts will be down low enough.

One perplexing aspect of this ordeal is that my body is supposed to start increasing my blood counts. This is not happening yet, but the doctors do not seem to be concerned. So pray that I can remain patient. The good news is that I am suffering almost no side effects. I have had no fever since Saturday night, and I am sleeping much better. In fact, they are taking me off of some of the antibiotics because I have had no fever for a while. I am slowly losing the excess fluid that has accumulated in my body. I have no appetite, but I am able to force myself to eat so that I can remain healthy. I am trying to exercise my legs and lungs, but it is difficult because I am so weak. Nevertheless, God is good.

And the USA just beat the best soccer team in the world (Spain) 2-0. What a great game.