About a week ago the doctors gave me permission to leave the hospital for a couple hours to have Thanksgiving dinner at the apartment. Of course, during the intervening week, I have been very excited to get out of here, even for a little while and look at something other than pink walls while I eat institutional food. During the week the doctor team changed over and a different attending physician was in charge. At 11:00am, just as everything was set to go, the doctor team came in and Dr. Orstein, the Attending, sat down on my bed and told me that she was not going to give me permission to go. I was stunned because I thought that it had all been approved a week ago with the doctors, but each Attending really has to go with their own best judgement.

A couple of years ago I would have folded and been really hurt for the rest of the day, but I have been practicing negotiation skills, and I really put them to work. It certainly did not hurt to have my wife and nurse there, both close to tears that I could not go. I discussed the matter with the Attending for about half an hour, and at the end of the time, she grudgingly relented. I was out of there SO FAST before some other hitch came up.

Becky's sister, Stephanie, had come up for the holidays, which was so sweet of her, seeing as she has her own family now. She spent most of Wednesday and Thursday cooking the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner imaginable. We had roasted duck, mashed potatoes and rutabagas, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce with orange and pecan, delicious stuffing, mincemeat pie, and my Aunt-in-law, Pru, brought those little onions with mushrooms, and blueberry pie. I could not believe how much food I ate, and it was all delicious. I am looking forward to leftovers today.

Today, whether from the neuprogen shot (which stimulates the growth of neutrophils) that I had yesterday, or my 3 hours of freedom and feasting, my neutrophils went from 240 yesterday to 940 today. 500 is the official number that they need to be for me to get out of here, so things are looking good. I still have the surgery that I am healing from, and I am not sure if they are going to keep me here until that heals, or whether they will just have me come in for Outpatient visits. My red blood cell count and platelet count are technically ok, but they are not all that. They are both just a little above the minimum needed before I get a transfusion, but again, that is something that can be done Outpatient. I am also on a lot of pills - painkillers, anti-nausea, anti-biotics, and some random ones. Some of them IV drip, so I am not sure what is going to happen there. When the team comes in today, we will see what they think. It would be pretty nice to be able to go "home" for a couple weeks or so.

When I get back from healing up, and building up some strength, then there will be a decision made on whether to have one more round of hard chemo to try to get rid of the remaining lymphoma in my bone marrow, or whether to go directly into my stem-cell transplant therapy. So, currently, no one knows what the next session will hold for me, or how long I will be here next time. If it is another round of Chemo, then I will be here about 4 to 6 weeks again. If it is the stem-cell transplant, then I will be here for more like 2 to 4 months. In some ways, I would rather get that over with sooner than later, spending winter inside seems a lot less onerous than spending spring inside, but I want to do whatever gives me the best chance over all, and I suspect that hard chemo, and then the stem cell transplant will be the way that they choose. If so, I will be out between March and May if everything goes well.