The Story Thus Far...

Some folks are just joining us so I thought I would interrupt my senseless musings for a story summary.

My name is David Mayer Smith. I'm known to many of you as Dave Winston, location sound mixer extraordinaire.

I have leukemia. APL (m3) to be specific. I am very fortunate in that APL has a very high permanent remission rate (95%+) and I am relatively young and strong for the treatment coming up.

I worked my ass off in October. Possible best month ever. But I was feeling kind of run-down afterward. I took it easy through November, but still felt tired. Thinking it might be diabetes or some kind of infection, I went to see my doctor who took some blood and sent me off to Thanksgiving. Well, the blood test came back and - surprise - there was no blood in my blood. Low red & white count and scarce platelets. The doc told me to be careful about bruising and bleeding.

On December 3, I found a bruise on my arm about the size of an orange - a bruise that had no known origin. I went to work anyway. Did the job. As I was wrapping out - nose bleed. So on the drive home I decided it was time to go to the hospital.
I spent a few days at Chestnut Hill Hospital where they dug a little hole in my back and into my hip bone looking for blood. They didn't find any. Now I don't know if you know this, but that's what they call bad. When they drill into your bones, they expect the blood to gusher like something out of There Will be Blood. In fact, I think that's where that movie got it's name. But I digress.

Anyway, no blood in my bones and no blood in my blood are two signs of leukemia. Chestnut Hill shipped me to Penn.

Merciful heaven above! Penn is awesome. If you want to know where they keep all those nurses like you see on TV - the kind, cool, caring, highly professional, yet highly empathetic ones - they all work on the 6th Floor of the Rhoads Pavillion in the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn. Oh, and I had about 150 doctors. I might be able to pick one or two of them out in a police lineup, but by God I had 'em!

I was put on a program of chemotherapy. That means, if you don't know, they find some of the deadliest poisons ever made and pour them into your body in amounts that almost, but not quite, kill you. The objective is to destroy all of the bone marrow in your body to prevent it from making bad blood. And when - when - your marrow re-grows it will make good blood again. In the mean time, you feel like shit and you have no immune system, so they pump you full of antibiotics and transfuse you with red blood cells and platelets to, you know, keep you alive.

You're attached 24/7 to a pump that constantly floods your system with all this stuff plus all the extra nutrients etc. that your body no longer processes properly. You take the pump to the bathroom with you. You walk the pump around the halls for exercise. You sleep with the pump. You eat - when you can - with the pump.

I celebrated Christmas with no immune system which meant I had no place to go but up. Then, my brain handed me a curve ball. I was highly sensitive to light and had a constant low grade headache from Day 1 of chemo. A skull CT showed some blood in my brain where blood ought not to be. So I celebrated New Year's Eve with the fine folks of Penn's Neurosurgery Dept. They opened up my skull and drained off the blood and plopped me into ICU in time to see the ball drop.

As 2009 dawned, I sported 13 cool stainless steel staples in my skull. With the bald head, dry wrinkled skin from the weight loss, it made for a striking look - in a Pirates of the Caribbean way. While I was getting my noggin' drained, my bone marrow was growing like crazy, now making fresh clean blood to power the Dave Machine. Since the chemo, my body has been coming back with a vengeance. My blood count numbers have been steadily rising ever since.

January 8th they decided to kick me out of the hospital and I have been home and feeling better ever since. There have been a few small curves in the recovery at home, but nothing to slow me down.

Monday (1/26/09) I start the second round of chemo called consolidation. This is designed to make sure my bone marrow doesn't get out of line and start making bad blood again. I go to Penn 5 days a week for 10 weeks to get a little dose of arsenic. Now I have spent most of my life avoiding arsenic as I was told it was bad for me. Now I will be spending a great deal of my time with it coursing through my veins. Oh the things modern science can do!

So that is the story to-date for those of you just checking in. I have left out many, many things, like the incredible devotion of my wife and kids, the visits from friends which meant more to me than they could ever know, the hundreds of emails and phone calls from friends and colleagues - all of which helped me get through one hellish December.

The rest of this blog is me whining. Like most blogs. I just hope it is entertaining whining. If not, let me know. I'll either kick it up a notch or ridicule you for mocking a cancer patient.

Patient's privilege.