Good News & Fun Cancer Drugs!

I go to the doctor a couple times a week to get a CBC (Complete Blood Count). I have brought Bryton twice because he thinks it is cool to see blood squirt out of my arm. I am proud of him. Anyway My CBC came back pretty much normal for the first time!!! That means I am out of the crisis phase and we can begin working on the remission thing!!!! This is a big milestone! Have a party!

I have mentioned a lot about the drugs I take. Well, here they are. In my hand you you will first see my morning hit. The white pill is called Allopurinal 300mg. It helps get the dead cellular debrit out of my blood. There is a slaughter going in in my veins and we are winning. Allopurinal is like the guys who would clean all the dead bodies up off the battle field and throw them in the river. Allo-P (as they call it in the streets) helps the dead blood cells, etc make it to my pee stream. Moving on.
Next we have Hydroxyurea. This pill is the "Shock and Awe" of the battle or one form of what we have all heard of as Chemotherapy. This is the generic. The name brand ones they gave me in the hospital were colored way prettier. They looked so cool, I used to stare at them for a bit before I put'em down. And that is the morning intake.
In the evening you can see we have no Allo-P, but we have added a couple of new friends: Gleevec and Prilosec Plus another Hydrea (I used to take 10 hydrea per day). Gleevec is the new drug that came out about 10 years ago that is saving so many people with CML. It's what they call a miracle drug. Before Gleevec, people in my situation were not likely to make it past 5 years. Gleevec is also considered Chemo and it fuels the fire within me! But the thing that makes me super grateful about it is this: If I had gotten CML when I was a teenager I probably wouldn't be alive right now. That means my cool little kids wouldn't be here either and Amanda would have married a total geek for sure. As mentioned in the last post it is also 9.2 times more expensive than gold at $132.50 per pill. It makes people alive but kills their wallets. Fair trade I think. There is a fair chance it won't work for me and if it does we don't know what the side effects will be long or short term. So far, . . . its too early to tell so cross your fingers please.
Last is my new favorite pill called Prilocec. It is no stranger to some. I'm not sure what it does exactly and I don't care a whole lot, because all I know is that it puts out the fire left over from the shock and awe and the napalm (Gleevec). Today I experienced very little burn compared to the previous two days and I hope it was the Prilosec. we will experiment to make sure that is what it was.
Okay, so that's my drugs! I hope it was as enjoyable as it was educational for everyone!