Sabbath 6: Man, Ain't That News!

The title of today's entry comes from a popular gospel lyric which goes:  Ain't that Good News?  Man, Ain't That News!  Good News is the English translation for Gospel or Evangile, in French, from which we get the words evangelist and evangelical.  Just a little background.  So Good News is good news, but it is also the news of salvation.  I know that many of my friends and family have been ardently praying not only for my recovery, but also for a cure.  I trust prayer: when you are desperate you learn to trust God.   My results from my first round of chemo certainly feel as if they came from above.

Chemo direct hit

     I received the doctor's report yesterday afternoon and, in brief, my White blood cell count (or to be more precise - the lymphocytes) had fallen from a high of 80k to a normal of 8k! (k=1000).  My hemoglobin (red) was normal; platelets, ok;  My spleen that had been slightly swollen and hardened, was now as supple as the shoe leather of my hiking boots (I intend to return to the hiking tale).  My lymph nodes had also shrunk to inconspicuous bumps.  All the good minerals that keep you from getting dehydrated were all normal.  In essence, in bowling terms, it was a dead on, down the middle strike.
I still have another 4 to 6 treatments over the same period of months, so my doctor will keep his eye on the slow or rapid re-accumulation of the lymphocytes in my system.  That is currently the nature of CLL.  It's a watch and wait process.  There are new drugs and even some experimental gene therapy that really look promising, but for now we watch and wait. 

Dynamic Duo

(Meanwhile, back in Montanna, and much healthier days) We like 3 unwitting pack animals had to carry in all the supplies we would need to survive during this marathon of mountain hiking (toilet paper too, and take the trash out with you, thank you).  I remember that my pack weighed around 45 lbs; Greg's 60 lb; and our third member 45 lb.  Greg is larger than both of us, comes from pioneer stock outside of Akron, OH and even played high school football.  He also had the highest quality backpack, designed by Sherpa in Nepal (or so he told us), and could distribute the extra weight evenly across his Paul Bunyan-like frame.   This all rested on the foundation of good hiking boots to support your ankles from bowing as we trudged along precipitous ridges.  The Indian caste system is often described as a physical body with the lowly Sudra (pronounced soo-druh) , the feet, supporting the entire body.  Although lowly the entire super structure of commerce, military and the ultimate horizon,  nirvana,  rest upon the humble Sudra.  Equally important back packing is how well-shod our Sudra are.  About a day and a half out on the trail, Greg's Sudra, or actually his not-completely-broken-in, new hiking boots (pronounced shod) began to cut into the backs of his ankles to which his Sudra are attached.   In the hierarchy of possible problems that you can encounter while back packing in the wild, this ranks just below getting mauled by a grizzly bear, especially since Greg was carrying the greatest amount of weight of the three.  It starts as a rub, then a blister and then after the blister breaks and what follows is blood.  You are on a strict schedule when backpacking in Glacier International Peace park, which is where we were.  There is no wandering off of the path or hanging out an extra night at one of the predetermined camp sites.  This is genuine wilderness where you can slip and fall and not get found for a few days.  There were no cell phones then, so aside from smoke signals (from a propane stove), we had no way of communicating directly with the park rangers.  So, like life, you have to deal with crisis while still on the move.  (to be continued)