Lenore's Adventure and Saturday update

While I was about to start yesterday's CHOP regimen, Lenore was having her annual followup with long-ago incident of skin cancer. As if her doctor thought Lenore wan't having sufficient empathy for my current situation, they decided to remove a couple of potential trouble spots on her face -- one just beneath her eye and other on her lip. When she stopped up to see how things were going for me I was still feeling OK and she clearly wasn't; plus she had big bandages to show for her pain. By late last night she was feeling good enough that she and my mom went to see a very disappointing 'Grass Roots' perfomance at the Palace Casino.

By last night I was feeling pretty rotten and had a long night. I didn't take my Prednisone until afternoon and as a result didn't get much sleep. Feeling much better today and actually hope to get some work done later. Mon & Dad are staying another day which really helps with James since he can be pretty relentless and he can't quite figure out why his dad is so grumpy.

One thing that made me a little grumpy over the past couple days was the realization that Rituxan isn't quite the silver bullet I thought it was...a case of hearing what I wanted to hear I fear. I somehow thought it killed only the cancerous B cells because I thought they uniquely expressed the CD-20 protein. It turns out that all B cells express CD-20 so all B cells get hit which makes me extra susceptible to secondary infections 10-14 days after the treatment. On the positive side, it doesn't require cell division to do its work so it should be pretty effective. /dps