Hi!

Hey There!
I have been in Austin, Texas this weekend with my best friend Laura. My cousin Chris lives here as well, so we have had a very fun time with him showing us around. Chris is a trooper...he took us to very nice lunches and dinners and upscale shopping centers. He is awesome!

I got a call from the doctor's office at NMH after my labs were done last week. I was feeling like I had swollen lymphnodes in my neck, however, I was doing a lot of physical labor working at Al Johnson's and at Ecology Sports. My tumor markers (LDH, SED) were below normal again which is wonderful! That means that there is no evidence of Hodgkin's activity based on blood work. What is not so great is my ANC and my white blood count. These two levels are your infection fighting ability. When I was going through chemo, and if my ANC were .500, they told me not to leave the house. Now, my ANC is .800. A normal person probably has an ANC of 4.5 or even higher. This is a scary thought considering I am going back to teaching this week!

I met a very nice woman from San Antonio, Texas at the pool here. She was bald, and I figured she was going through breast cancer. Absolutely not. This woman, 6.5 years ago, was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She had an Auto transplant and then relapsed two and a half years later. She was treated again. She relapsed again 8 months ago with Pre-Leukemic cells. When you are given so much chemotherapy and radiation, there is a great chance that you could develop Leukemia. Well, she did. She was given an Allogenic transplant four months ago, and she looks fabulous, and she is clean! When I see someone like that, I feel guilty because I don't feel like I have been through anything compared to her! I guess it is all relative.

Here are some pics from the trip.
Have fun!
Sherrie