re-staging (again)

Well, tomorrow I get re-staged. Again. Echo cardiogram, pulmonary function test, CT of my sinuses (I have no idead why they're doing this) and bone marrow biopsy (aka ass-drilling). All this work will be done with my new chemo group that focuses solely on blood cancers. For them to treat me, they want to know what they're dealing with in terms of medical condition. The whole thing strikes me as kind of unnecessary as I had this restaging in December and with the chemo I've gotten and the positive response, it's hard to image that anything has changed in a negative way. But they have to do this to practice good medicine so I'll just grin and bear it. I asked them to get out of the bone marrow biopsy - it's not terribly painful but having someone drill into your ass (well actually, a bone in your lower back) isn't much fun. But I failed in my efforts to dodge this procedure so away we go!

Tuesday this week we go in for a training session on how to keep our house clean so that I can stay at home during the high dose chemo and not get an infection. We've already read a big manual so I think we're pretty much set on what to expect but we do have some questions.

Physically, I'm feeling quite good. My RBCs are still kind of low so I do run out of gas if I push very hard on the bike or run. But every day I do feel a bit better. I'm sleeping well,  eating well, getting good exericse in and in general, just trying to get as healthy as I can before I start the next big stage of chemo on the 21st of March. This period has been kind of nice - it's been a month since my last chemo, my last PET scan showed that the tumors have pretty much gone away and all I've got to do is hang out and build up energy and endurance for the next big push.

One other nice plus was that I went to yoga this week. I've been feeling very tight in general since I finished the chemo in August but I've been worried that yoga would either be just really uncomfortable or, after this last round of chemo, not even doable. But the yoga felt really, really good. I think I will do more yoga in the next few weeks - it feels like that will be a nice addition to my routine that will help my body function better as I recover from the last 2 rounds of chemo.