This past Monday was my last scheduled chemotherapy appointment. Next Monday I’m going to the University of Kansas for a whole day of fun tests – First a PET scan, then a CT scan, and finally another biopsy. The results from those tests should be ready by that Friday, October 20th, when I’m going in to review everything with the transplant team. They’ll tell me at that point whether or not we can move forward with the bone marrow transplant.

Either way, there’s going to be more chemo appointments. If the cancer still isn’t gone, we need to kill it. If it is gone, we need to destroy my immune system to the extent that we can shove someone else’s stem cells into me without my body putting up a fight.

I’m actually feeling pretty good after this most recent round of treatments. My energy level is okay, and the pain has been minimal. There’s some muscle tenderness, and some painless spasms in my legs, but nothing too bad.

Mentally I think I’m doing better as well. That weekend we had last month where my son spent the night in the hospital, my cat died, and my doctor told me my chemo wasn’t working, all in less than 48 hours, took a lot more out of my spirits than I realized at the time.

There’s going to be a lot of things to deal with when this is all over; debt, getting my work back on track, etc. While some of that is anxiety inducing, it’s a weirdly comforting thought that I’ll only have to deal with all of that once I defeat cancer.

Basically, there’s no reason to sweat the future if my own goddamn blood can’t kill me.