Back in the days of yore, before Nancy and I had bought the hilltop farm and we were summering our sheep on small borrowed pastures around the edges of the Village of Candor, we had a black sheep or two.
You know that expression, "The black sheep of the family?" We discovered some weird truth to it. Over on the right side of the hillside would be 20 or 30 sheep grazing contentedly. Way over on the left side, by themselves, would be the one or two black sheep.
When it was time to move them all to fresh grass, we'd open the gate and they'd all run through, except the black sheep. They'd run the opposite direction. If it was a black sheep, you could bank on it, as though the circuits in their brains ran counter clockwise.
Here's another expression: "We need some new blood in this organization." I now know this is more than a trite turn of phrase. For the first time in my life, I received a transfusion yesterday and the day before. If zero = dead and ten = perfection, I would rank my energy level before the transfusion at about 1.5 and now, 24 hours after, at about 5.
At the National Institutes of Health, I was given the transfusion with the goal of boosting my immune system enough to help beat down this unending sinus infection---the infection being a common side effect of CLL due to the impaired immune system. They also sent me to one of their in-house ear, nose, throat specialists, who used a little "micro vacuum" to suck all that yucky goop out of there and get it analyzed. They also switched from sulphamethoxazone antibiotic to Levofloxacin, which I also think is making a difference.
All of this might seem tangential to the CLL and the clinical trial of PCI-32765. It is. But that's how it is with CLL: It's the tangential stuff that will kill you.
I have to say the experimental drug PCI-32765 so far has been darned near miraculous. I feel better today than I have in weeks. I don't think I'll make the Tour de France this year, but it's looking good for 2013.
