Ellen Van Winkle

Sometimes, after finding out what the next few months were going to be like, I'd think, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could just take a nice nap and wake up and have all of this behind me." Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for...I've been doing some marathon sleeping lately: Jimmy says it's been sixteen out of twenty-four hours at least. I guess that's what my body needs right now.

The recovery from Round 6 has not been as tough as Round 5's recovery ( but how would I know? I've slept through it.) I'm supposed to go into the hospital tomorrow to begin Round 7, but I can't because even after numerous bags of blood and platelets, my counts are still way too low, so yesterday they told us we could go to Highlands for a few days to mend. I can sleep and make platelets in much more comfort there than here in sweltering Atlanta. And the change of scenery will do us both a world of good.

I got the results of the PET CT I just had and everything looks great: I still show no sign of active cancer anywhere in my body, and the tumor has shrunken .2 more centimeters. It's so small that they say it may be just scar tissue.

I take back what I said about wishing I could sleep through this experience. It's a hard thing to explain. I think often about a conversation I had with a Highlands friend who was battling a form of leukemia, and who was about to have a stem cell transplant at Duke (he had underlying cardiac issues and did not survive) and I told him how sorry I was that he was sick. He thanked me and said," I'm sorry, too, but I'm not sorry for the things I've learned from it, about life and what's important, about faith, about myself and the people I love and the people who love me. It has been a rewarding, enriching experience, but I just wish I didn't have to have cancer to learn all these things." I've thought about that conversation a lot.