I was scheduled to go to the Dana Farber Institute, Boston, Mass., on March 4th. The office staff of my local oncologist navigated the paperwork through the channels of my insurance company.
The appointment is with a Dr. Eric Jacobsen. I looked him up on the Internet. Seems to be a fairly recent addition to the staff. Has had some teaching duties at Harvard. His focus seems to be on stem cell transplants. Is CLL his specialty? Doesn't say. No reason to think so.
It was in the middle of my waiting for confirmation of this appointment that I learned of http://www.clltopics.org/. What I learned there set my tired brain working on this idea: If I were to list the top five CLL specialists in the world, who would be on the list? And if I do not know whom to put on that list, who would know?
I sent an e-mail to Chaya Venkat, the creator of the clltopics Web site. Within ten minutes I had a personal reply. Utterly amazing.
So, my plan (as of Thursday night, Feb. 28) is to cancel the Dana Farber appointment, have the tests done that Dr. Terry Hamblin suggests, and then take all that data with me to whatever CLL expert I settle on, somebody on that "top 5" list.
O.K., so maybe Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. But it sure is amazing.
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