A week in the hospital
This post is about my health situation, which is serious, but not dire; and what I'm going to do about it.
I have a slow-acting, curable bone marrow disease. Treatment is a week of in-patient IV chemotherapy, which in about 95% of cases leads to permanent remission.
The disease is called hairy-cell leukemia, and the chemotherapy drug is called Cladrabine.
The current plan is for me to go in to Mt. Auburn Hospital on the morning of Tuesday the 20th, and go home on the 27th. If those dates change, I'll send out an announcement My hematologist (Dr. Lisa Weissmann, who is AMAZING) tells me my primary problem in the hospital will be boredom, so visitors are extremely welcome. My energy level should be decent, and my diet will be unrestricted (though mild nausea is a possible side effect of the drug).
After that, I'll be recuperating at home for several weeks. During this period, my immune system will be depressed, so I won't be going to parties or such, but small groups of healthy visitors are OK. If all goes well, by late summer I should feel fully recovered, and I hope to be pronounced cured next year.
How do I feel now? Good--very good. The only current symptoms for me are slightly lowered energy level and an increased sensitivity to bruising. After the fear and misery of finding out that I probably have a bone marrow disorder--many of which are severely life-threatening-- the actual diagnosis came as an immense relief. I'm still kind of euphoric about it. The support from those of you who knew about the situation has already been fantastic; I apologize to the rest of you for playing it so close to the chest until I had more info.
UPDATE: Knowing the kind of friends I have, a dismaying number of you will probably be excited to learn that the Journal of Clinical Oncology has a detailed article on the effects of Cladribine (note corrected spelling) on HCL in the March 1 2003 issue.