Cautiously Optimistic

At Friday's long-awaited clinic visit with my main transplant doctor, we got the results from Monday's bone marrow biopsy:

"No evidence of disease".

In other words, no leukemia. No cancer. Gone.

This is worth a cheer. It's been interesting to me to watch people's reactions to this news. Across the board, people are jubilant, utterly giddy. I hear their (silent) sighs of relief that this is over, finally. It's fun being the bearer of good news.

A friend of mine has as her "Religious Views" on Facebook.com that she is "cautiously optimistic". I think that phrase would best characterize how I feel about the biopsy results. There are nine months until I'm one-year post-transplant, when I can actually contact my donor to thank her for saving my life. The reason for this one year delay is because risks are rife still and will continue to be for my entire life. In other words, it's not so cool if you find out the chick you donated marrow to kicked the bucket six months after she flew out to Warsaw to give you an appreciation hug. And the graft-versus-host-disease I have still mystifies my medical team as I suffer through their various drug attempts at remedy.

Of course, that whole "kick the bucket" thing is not going to happen for another, oh I'd say sixty years, but I have definitely become more than a little jaded about the concept of being "cancer free". The biggest fear is relapse. Who do you think has a better chance of developing leukemia (or a host of other fun cancers due to the treatments), me or any schmuck you pull off the street? Relapsing was more jarring to my sense of the world than original diagnosis. Coming home from yoga, planning my March 08 celebration of end of treatment, to find my sister on my bed in Boston with tears and news that my last biopsy... that memory resonates all too clearly and frequently. I have learned you cannot assume anything.
And, plus, who among us is "cancer free"? Who hasn't worried about standing too close to the microwave or wondered if it's true that anti-perspirant causes breast cancer? Who doesn't know someone who's died of the disease? We all face it every day, in our own ways.

So, yes, the biopsy results confirmed what other indications had suggested- no trace of leukemia. I remain cautiously optimistic. It's the best that I can do.