First - thank you to Dan for his updates while I've been .... um.... hehe - more "out" of it.

Today has been a very full day. Physically, I'm feeling fantastic. Since I got re-admitted to the hospital last Saturday, I've gone up and down on the fever scale (my first big fever broke Monday morning, and had a 2nd spike yesterday). Today, every one of my temps has been in more of a normal range. Temps in the hospital are taken in Celsius - under 37C is totally normal, 37-38 is a low grade fever that is pretty much nothing, 38.0C+ is considered an actual fever. In Fahrenheit terms, 37.0C = 98.6F and 38.0C is 100.4F. This last temp I had was 37.3, so very happy with that.

One reason I'm in here still (and will be for a bit) is since I'm getting the fevers, they want to keep me totally isolated and monitored - which is a good thing. I've been in private rooms this whole time - though I am currently in my third room. I was in a double-room originally with no roommate, but then they needed that room and had a single free so moved me. Then yesterday, since the single was one of their few rooms with a cardiac monitor, they moved me again and now I'm back in a different double room, again with no roommate. VERY roomy - lol.

I'm constantly hooked up to IV drips - tons of hydration as well as tons of antibiotic and antiviral drips, and antibiotic pills during the day as well. Doctors come by twice a day, as well as I get my blood tested every night. The high dose chemo I got earlier (the BCNU, VP-16 and Cytoxan) basically did their job in killing all white blood cells in my body. Then I got the transfusion on the 16th, and for the past three days, I've additionally been getting neupogen shots which is a drug which helps the white cells multiply. So far - my white blood count (WBC) has been fixed at 0.3. To give perspective - normal WBC counts are 4.5 - 10.0 typically. When I got ready for the collection, I had to have at least a 3.0 to start collection.

***MAJOR news - my nurse JUST came in as I'm typing this - my WBC for tonight is 0.8!!! During collection, again, my WBC was just constant at a low number but once it started rising, it only took about 2 more days to get into the normal territory. Now, I'm only taking half as much neupogen a day as I got then, but still VERY encouraged by the numbers finally starting to rise.

In other news - I gotta say today's news both saddened and stunned me. First Farrah's passing - esp after her very courageous battle against her cancer.... hits very close to home. I mean - I am VERY thankful that I've actually been able to be able to get to complete remission, so not even close to being in the same boat as her, but still - I can understand some of what she's gone through and had to face.

Then the out-of-the blue news about Michael Jackson. I'm old enough that I REMEMBER the Jackson 5 - anyone else remember their cartoon? The song "One bad apple"? Then growing up and having his other major hits coming out during high school and college... I saw one interview with "people on the street" and some guy said that Michael Jackson's work was the soundtrack to this guy's life.

Anyways - just wanted to give an update to everyone as well as express my sense of loss of these two people today. Now that I'm feeling a lot stronger, hopefully it won't be as long until the next update.