Bone biopsy

Started my day with a blood draw and a bone biopsy. Lenore's sister Kathleen dropped me off at the clinic at 8:00 am so Lenore didn't have to rush James off to day care earlier than usual. With the 3+" snow this morning, things were pretty quiet around the clinic so I got in ahead of schedule and the bone biopsy was almost over before Lenore arrived. It wasn't pleasant and I must admit I did writhe and moan a bit so its just as well that Lenore didn't see how wimpy I really am (at least when needle-like objects are headed in my direction). Lenore's mom has had bone biopsies and she assured me that they weren't too bad but then again Norma is tougher than I am. After witnessing childbirth I think women are probably tougher than men in general -- in fact I suspect that if we men had to have the babies our species would have gone extinct long ago! Overall though, it wasn't nearly as painful as I head feared. I should have results back on that in a few days (which will undoubted seem longer). Kim, the lab tech who prepared my marrow slides was a student in my introductory biology course several years ago so that put teaching in a perspective I had never considered.

On my way out of the oncology department through a more general waiting room, I made eye contact with a a few people that I recognized but did not know. My first reaction was that they were thinking something like "He has cancer -- how tragic" which seemed like a reasonable assessment at the moment. Then as Lenore I were walking out to the car it suddenly occurred to me that it is at least possible that I am already cancer free since my tumor had been well encapsulated and Dr. Marion was confident he had removed all of it (see adjuvant chemotherapy on Mayo Clinic's Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma information page). If that is the case then my coming chemo and radiation might really just be precautionary, a thought I found most encouraging. At he same time, I also know that might not be the case and that cancer is all about probabilities. Along that line of thinking, I want to suggest that you all read Stephen J. Gould's wonderfully humane essay "The Median Isn't the Message." /dps