Canswerist

You can never conquer a mountain. Mountains can't be conquered; you conquer yourself — your hopes, your fears. — Jim Whitaker LINK: PQ - The People Quotient Dee Dee and I spent the entire day at City of Hope, as has been typical lately on Fridays. Although the day was long, it was elating. The most positive moment of the day happened when one of the resident physicians, Dr. Lopez, walked in the room with the printed results of our PET scan from yesterday: "Negative!" No more cancer! Soon after, our primary physician, Dr. Nakamura walked in (beaming from ear to ear) with the explanation: "Incredible!" So, it was a day (number 44 post transplant) full of superlatives . An answer to prayer and confirmation of our hopes and faith. Needless to say, we also got confirmation of a reality we already knew: The stem cell transplant from our unrelated, 24-year-old overseas donor is a complete success. A DNA test confirms that I now have my donor's DNA and immune...

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul. — Luther Burbank LINK: PQ - The People Quotient An estimated 135,520 people in the United States will be diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2007. New cases of leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma account for 9.4 percent of the 1,444,920 new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States this year. As I have noted before, mantle cell lymphoma ( MCL ) represents less than 10 percent of these cases and my particular form (the aggressive blastoid type) of this disease is a much smaller percentage. For these reasons (and more), I have to be very grateful for the progress that has been made in my treatment and for the wonders of modern medical science. Less than 20 months from the onset of the disease, I am on the way to recovery following the allogeneic stem cell transplant ( SCT ) from an unrelated donor. I guess my current status was best summe...