Kingdom Of The Sick 14

In many ways, my initial weeks home after I'd had my first stem-cell transplant were more traumatic than my stay in the hospital and the transplant itself had been. My immune system had been compromised by both the transplant and the large amounts of chemotherapy that I'd received, and I had to be on the alert for possible infections. Because of this, I was supposed to take my temperature regularly; if my fever rose above 100.5 degrees, I was told, it could be life-threatening. Being the obsessive that I am, I stuck a thermometer in my mouth at least every half-hour. My temperature fluctuated, veering from below normal to well above it; several times it inched toward the dreaded 100.5.

Things eventually leveled out, and I was able to relax my vigilance.

But I still had to visit doctors regularly and submit to a variety of tests.

In particular, my blood was monitored as often as possible, and even the slightest variance from the norm was analyzed exhaustively. As weeks, then months passed and the time for my second transplant drew nearer, it was decided that I had to have the blood in my bone marrow checked to see if any cancer had returned.

This is an excruciating test, involving the insertion of a long, corkscrew-like needle into an area near the lower back. To make things worse, the person who performed the procedure did not have the lightest touch. Even more torturous, after submitting myself to this ordeal, I had to wait several weeks for the results.

The call came late one Friday afternoon. "Mr. Flesh," the transplant specialist told me when I picked up the phone, "I'm not happy with the way your bone-marrow test turned out." Not exactly the words a patient wants to hear, and her matter-of-factness about the whole thing made my receiving the information all the worse. "It looks like the cells in your marrow are 40 or 50 percent cancerous," she continued. "We won't be able to do the second transplant like we'd planned, at least not right away." Each word that she spoke made me more certain that I was doomed.

Once my initial panic had subsided, I paid a frantic visit to my oncologist, with whom I have an excellent relationship. He gave me another test, drawing blood from my arm and sending it off to a lab so that it could be tested specifically for the type of cancer I have, mantle-zone lymphoma. When the results came back, they showed that I had almost no cancer cells in my blood, a far cry from what had been indicated in my marrow. I do not know and think that I will never know the reasons for the discrepancy. Still, within days it was decided that my second stem-cell transplant was on again.

By this time, it was too late for any relief on my part. The emotional roller coaster created by the varying diagnoses had taken its toll. I now dreaded the second transplant even more than I had the first.