October 11, 2010 10:45 PM

A reunion!

Tonight I went to my leukemia support group meeting. The guest speaker was the first doctor that I had who diagnosed my disease. She had not seen me since the beginning of last year so she was delighted to see that I was doing so well.

A couple of things emerged from her talk. One was that I was lucky enough to be one of the 7,000 to 9,000 people who contract AML each year. I can't win the lottery but I can buck the odds to get leukemia! Another interesting comment was that no one really knows why people get the disease!

As for getting a bone marrow transplant, back in 1990 the death rate was 40% while today it has decreased to 5% - we've come a long way!

She talked about drug trials of which I have not had any and about the difference between lymphoma and leukemia and what it means regarding the type of transplant that you can have - autologous for lymphoma(you) and allogenic for leukemia(someone else) because lymphoma does not affaect the blood like leukemia does. Another interesting tidbit is that lyphoma and leukemia are the most curable cancers. So I guess that I can consider myself "lucky" in that regard.

It was a little more fun in the afternoon when I played bridge with some people at our church. My cards were so good that we outscored them by 4320 to 470. That's almost unheard of! But, when you have all the cards all the time, such a result is to be expected.

Not much else going on as we await the arrival of the flooring for our den which is to be installed on Monday.

Tomorrow is bridge(couples this time) and dinner at a friend's house.

Life is good...

Bob