MDS Mitch Golfs Stowe

I suddenly realized that several days have passed since my last blog entry. No worries—traveled to Stowe, Vermont doing on-site golf research.

Well, someone's gotta do it.

The trip was delightful, although playing Stowe's new golf course, Stowe Mountain Golf Club, was as much like hiking as golfing.

Seems they built the thing directly into the Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak hillsides. You actually must sign a waiver to drive a golf cart because some of the cart path's switchback descents are so winding and steep.

Maybe they should offer an adventure golf cart driving school?

And, the foliage, approaching peak color, was spectacular, even if it did keep distracting me from the golf shot at hand.

Be that as it may, I seem to have survived playing two consecutive days, first climbing up and down the mountain course, and then in 47-degree weather at the lower-elevation Stowe Country Club followed by the six-hour drive home.

Today I'm feeling a bit bushed, and I seem to have cultivated a headache whilst sleeping last night, but I'm not as tired as I expected to be.

And, the best news is: I played pretty well for 27 or those 36 holes. (I shot horribly on the second-day front nine, but miraculously recovered on the back nine. Go figure.)

The only slightly consternating moment, health-wise, came when I knocked my head against the golf cart roof as I was climbing aboard. With my last platelet counts being below the magic "you can do anything you want" 100,000 mark, I immediately decided I would develop a brain hemorrhage from this bang on the noggin.

So far, however, my head knocking seems to have had no effect.

I guess it was just the Shklear genes—my maternal side—leaking through. My grandma Sarah, who swore she was deathly ill all the years I knew her, ranked among the world's great hypochondriacs. She only lived to 100.

But, she passed along a dominant hypochondriacal gene to both her grandsons named Bernard, and a recessive version to most of the rest of us.

Who knows? If I bang my head harder next time, it might knock some sense into me.

MDS: Drilling for Bone Marrow

Yesterday we endured the landmark bone marrow biopsy ritual.

Landmark because it comes after the fourth cycle of Vidaza shots, the time when true signs of Vidaza success should show up. Ritual because this is bone biopsy Number Three in what we hope won't be a long line of such tests.

Dr. O now takes the sample from the back of my pelvis. It begins with a couple of royally large novocaine injections. Not a mind-numbing experience. Rather, an upper butt-numbing one.

The procedure itself feels rather like someone is thumping on you with a hammer and a small, dull chisel or nail-set. Since I can't see what she's doing back there, I envision this small device delving into my bone and pulling out marrow as one might take a tree-ring boring or polar ice sample.

Mostly, I don't like to visualize that.

So, why are we doing this?

To see what the marrow is doing, as Dr. O puts it. Apparently we're looking out for

• increased blasts (bad, non-developing red blood cells)
• other abnormalities in the marrow
• and, much to my surprise, cytogenetics—further degeneration, stasis, or even minor miraculous repair (not likely), of the chromosomes.

From these results, we'll decide if the Vidaza treatments continue. (Which they will anyway, beginning next week, whilst we await the results, which Dr. O says should take a week, although last time the cytogenetics took two weeks, so I'm not sure what we'll know in a week.)

Apparently it was Dr. MDS who recommended this biopsy. Dr. O inferred that Dr. MDS wants it as a measure to use in considering the bone marrow transplant "because you're young."

For reiteration and clarification—age-wise, I'm right in the middle statistically for bone marrow transplant success, and still young enough to have decent chance of success.

Heck, I'm just happy to hear someone refer to me as young.

Meanwhile, yesterday's blood counts were good

• Platelets—139,000
• Hemoglobin:—12.0

indicating, as they have been all along, positive things.

So, next week, having graduated from being a core-sample guinea pig, I get to return to being a pin cushion.

Carry on, doc. Fill me with needles.

MDSMitch Goes to Maine

Immediately upon arriving here in Maine, two things happened:

• fog set in
• exhaustion set in.

According the my astute mathematical calculations, seven hours were required to drive from Hartford to Southwest Harbor, on the edge of Acadia National Park.

Then it was delicately pointed out to me that we had arrived in Ellsworth too late to stop in Reny's Department Store, which closes at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

I first learned of Reny's, a Maine, family-owned chain of 15 stores, from friend, travel writer extraordinaire and Maine expert Hilary Nangle (or Travels with Hilary). You never know what you'll find in this place, but it has proven for me to be an excellent source of $3 reading glasses.

Anyway, if we were too late to stop at Reny's, it was noted, which is at least an hour's drive from Southwest Harbor, and we left Hartford about 10:15, we couldn't possibly have gotten here in 7 hours.

So much for math-by-Mitch. We see now why his math SAT's kept him out of his original college of choice.

We are here, however, no matter how long it took. And, it turns out that seven-plus hours of driving (it wasn't all driving—there were stops for necessities), may still be a tall order for a man with MDS. Because right now I can barely see straight enough to type this.

But, since the other arrival event—the fog—is obscuring all there is to see anyway, it may be that an 8 o'clock bedtime may not lead to any feelings of deprivation. Not even sleep-deprivation.

So, to all a good night.