retrospective.

I felt pretty darn good this week, though I still have to take that little brown reminder every night. I thought I'd share with you the email I sent to my office that kinda broke the story on my diagnosis. I only do this because I've been reading articles, blogs, etc lately that addresses the topic of keeping the disease to yourself or shouting it to the masses (I chose the latter).

Without further adieu.

First and foremost, I want to thank all of you for the emails, prayers, chi, vibes and such.

It's been a rough week for my family and sometimes its hard to really fathom the permanence of it all.

I'm going to apologize in advance if I rehash too much of what Paul already shared with you - but I thought it might be helpful to help clear some things up.

The truth of the matter is, I have Leukemia - which is a form of cancer in my blood. Unlike like a lot of cancers, I do not technically have tumors. The devices in my body that create white blood cells unfortunately have mutated, so now many of my white blood cells are the 'bad guys'. The problem is, the bad guys are a little stronger than the good ones and were taking over my body. To put things in perspective - a normal white blood count is 5,000 to 10,000...mine was 185,000 when I arrived at the emergency room on Thursday night.

Here's the good news, my count is already down to 85,000. Some other good news is that I have the Chronic Myelogenous form of Leukemia. Sure, I still have cancer (which sucks) but mine can be treatable by what is called a miracle drug (Gleevec). Unlike true Chemo, the drug I take is targeted and only goes after the 'bad guy' white cells that have the Philadelphia Chromosome (I guess that's where it was identified). Its too early to tell how I will respond to this, but most people tolerate it very well. Some other good news is that there are two more drugs that do similar things should I no longer respond to the Gleevec.

As these white cells are killed off, I will be really immunosuppressed and need to keep my distance from all you germ farms. After some time, my body should rebuild with good cells and hopefully get me to a remissive state. My goal is to get back to work by mid next week in a reduced role and slowly build up. I'm going to warn you in advance that I'm going to in and out a lot since I have to give blood twice a week and will have doctor appointments pretty regularly. Additionally, mornings are pretty rough on me as my body flushes out all the dead or dying cells. Please be patient and find somebody else to lift all the heavy stuff. Also don't point or stare since my arms will probably look like a heroin addict with the sticks I got over the past week.

Without getting too morbid - I'm going to answer the question nobody wants to ask. As long as the drugs are controlling the 'bad guys', I'm golden. Every year Gleevec has been on the market (its only been out for about 6 years) the median life expectancy has grown. The second and third tier drugs are just as promising, if not more so. Lastly, since I am so young - I am still a candidate for a bone marrow transplant which is actually the only way to cure the disease but about 3 in 10 die from complications and I'm not liking those odds unless the drugs stop working.

The good news for all of you is that Leukemia typically affects about 1 in 100,000 in the 30 - 40 age group so I've pretty much saved all your lives, again. Also, apparently cutting back on the McDonald's wasn't my secret to weight loss after all. ;-)

Hope to see you guys next week.

- ak