Back for more

We're back in Rochester for the second transplant. Yesterday was biopsy day, which in principle should say something definite about my response to the first transplant, but it's hard to parse the results posted so far, except to say that it's clear that there still are tumor cells actively reproducing, and that they generally look pretty similar to what was there before the first transplant. This is not surprising, although many people do better. That's why we're back. Such is the state of the art in oncology: do the same thing over again and hope for a different result. Sometimes it works, too.

Before we left Louisville, I did manage to get in a bike ride--nine miles with no trouble getting up the same hills that nearly did me in at the beginning of August. I was pretty sure that the red blood cells had come back, and yesterday's blood work confirmed that they had more or less returned to normal values. Too bad they won't be sticking around for long. I was just beginning to enjoy the feeling.