Back to the hospital…
Yesterday I unexpectedly ended up back in the hospital and started a new round of chemotherapy. My pre-transplant workup earlier in the week included a routine bone marrow biopsy, which showed that there are again blast cells in my marrow. These are those arrested myloblasts that define Acute Mylogenous Leukemia (AML).
So we once again go down a path to beat this nagging leukemia into remission - literally!
One more week in the hospital is not a big deal. In fact, I get to catch up on my several thousand-email backlog, not to mention all the work that I’ve been meaning to get to! I don’t have to drive anywhere or do anything even remotely unproductive. I actually wonder at times if the push-button food procurement system and short bed-to-bathroom distances in the hospital aren’t great for any entrepreneur trying to focus (yes, we all know how hard that is!). Anyway, I digress. Someone remind me that I’m supposed to be sick! 
My point was that the short time in the hospital is not that bad. As long as I come out healthier than I went in. The more times this leukemia shows an ability to come back, the more difficult time they say my body will have fighting it off, even after transplant. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t really care about the science or the odds. We all know what the score will be at the end of this match!
Overconfident? Maybe a little. But my appointment with the head of the Hutch, Dr. Applebaum, made it clear to me that this is the time in my life to muster supreme confidence (and, of course, faith in the even more supreme God in whose hands my fate rests). He cited a study done by a very scientific and data-driven doctor at the Hutch that showed a very strong scientific correlation between long-term survival and one important attitude parameter: optimism. Those patients who are more optimistic - who believe that everything will, in fact, work out - actually cause themselves to survive at a higher rate than pessimists (or maybe even realists!). Or, put another way, this is the time in my life I should be thankful for being an entrepreneur rather than a venture capitalist!
