January 5, 2011

Joel Macaulay is bald, and still a wee bit sexy!!!

Ok, the stuff from the last bone marrow is in. If you remember, when I first came in my bones were full of cancer cells and that was the 100 percent mark. We are now at (or slightly under) the one percent mark! :D Also they've pretty much confirmed what kind of Leukemia it is, with all its special, personal little details. Basically it's the Pre-B-cell A.L.L. (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) and it has one of the best prognosis of all the types of A.L.L. Found out that I am a Slow Early Responder, which means I get a few extra weeks of chemo and some radiation treatment at the end. When I first started this, I agreed to be part of a cancer study, which is simply that they take a little extra blood and bone marrow, and they ship it off to the states somewheres for testing. So I'm actually getting the best testing and most up to date results available, which is cool! Starting the second phase of treatment tomorrow, which will last for eight weeks I believe. There's something every week so I'm not sure if I'll be able to come back for a visit. But in the third phase of treatment it looks like their might be a couple ten day breaks between treatments and hopefully then it'll work. From now on the treatments will be working to drop the number of cancer cell from one in one hundred to one in a thousand. Then one in ten thousand, ect. It's just me and my Mom down here now, dad and the bro's are heading back, in the snow, right now. Everybody says its snowing here, I personally call it slushing. Feeling good, steroids are disappearing quite nicely. And they didn't make me fat like they were supposed to. And ya! God is good!!!