When the Cat's Away

Jon did a wonderful job on eloquent and entertaining updates (albeit with some technological hurdles), but dad's diet has taken an acidic turn in the wrong direction. And dad couldn't be happier with the breakfast pictured below. Not to worry, Steven stopped at Whole Foods on the way back from the airport, and is armored with Swiss
chard, kale, parsley and vegan cheese to concoct a makeshift southern spinach Madeleine, without any of unhealthy ingredients (which is just about all of them) and using high alkaline, healthy ingredients!

"I can't believe how good I feel," said moments ago, is confirmed by the temperature and blood pressure data (97.8 and 147/71 accordingly). The white blood cell count hit 400, and the Absolute Neutrophil Count hit 28 (a small bounce from yesterday), so his immune system is at its most vulnerable point, and I'm happy the hawk eyes are back and keeping mom's mask in place (her new nickname is Paula the Petrie Dish, and her updated photo is posted below).

The doc said that while the last bag of chemo is going in now, it will continue to have an effect on his immune system in the coming days. But hopefully he stays away from some dirty bugs and the temperature stays even- that will be the smoothest recovery and leave us with the most options if any subsequent treatment will be needed.

We got the chromosomal analysis back and of course dad has quite a unique type of AML, with a deletion of the 5th and 12th chromosome, and another technical expression that only Jon can pronounce. The only patient with a similar expression Jon has been able to find was an Italian in the late 80's. Maybe he drove an Alfa Romeo Spider- fitting for the coming triumphant return of the same model to the US. So the elder son has been hard at work with his resources and contacts analyzing the best further courses of action. We will keep everyone updated if anything changes from the recovery track in Mandeville for the next 2 weeks.

Given dad's great attitude, health and durability, we are optimistic we can handle the inevitable transfer with ease. I say inevitable because if he goes into remission, we'll be thinking bone marrow transplant, which would take place in New Orleans or Houston. Otherwise, we would probably go into more exotic treatments in Houston, but we will see.