102.4

Is it the fluorescent luminescence that draws me back time and time again? The bone-grinding procedures, the hilarity of my bodily functioning being table talk, or maybe those dang-good-spirited nurses smocks perhaps? No, it is is none of these things that find me here again, in yet another room at Stanford Medical Center.

I'm here because I woke up with a high fever on Thursday, 11/18, and fevers are a good sign that there's some kind of infection in the body. Because my white blood cell count is so low, other indicators may not present themselves (such as pus, swelling, etc), we and the docs are left wondering at the source.

Meanwhile, the results from Wednesday's bone marrow results were not happy. One's bone marrow should be filled with white blood cells (as one is as a newborn); I apparently only have about 10% total up in there (what a 90-yr-old might have) and of those, 80% are leukemic.

It's Sunday now and I've been without fever for 24 hours. Another 24 and they will assume that one of their IV antibiotics did the trick and I can go home.

Whether here or there, the same questions loom about the big picture. The "how do we keep this girl alive as long as possible game?". I can see the doctors all white-coats-aside throwing darts at a board with the following in various rings:

should she do another round of vidaza/myletarg?
should she can another infusion of cells from her original donor?
should we just send her home and let hospice take it from there?
should we try XXX brand of chemo next?

So if anyone asks you, How's Erica? you can say that neither she nor her doctors have any idea.

For me, my emotions are all over the place. So much sadness. sadness. sadness. a bit of anger and fear.

Friends and visitors and all that the tokens they send remind me why life's worth fighting for.