Moose eat peaches!

While we were away for a few days a moose attacked our four peach trees and a pear tree. We know it was a moose because the pear tree was surrounded by a seven foot fence and the animal reached over the fence to eat the new growth! As my friend Jack Gondela said, a moose eating peaches is a geographic oddity. Now that central Maine is warm enough to be a peach growing area, moose have taken a liking to this new fruit.

I picked a bunch of peaches that had been half eaten by the piggy moose, complete with giant tooth marks. As they ripened I cut away the moose slobber and ate them...there is something thrilling about sharing a peach with a moose.

Gina and I will be leaving after Labor Day on a two month road trip around the US. We'll be driving our minivan equipped with a platform bed and camping out. We will be documenting the trip through this blog.

It's not hard for you to comment on the blog. You need a Google Gmail account...another way to capture people in the Googleplex. This word, coined by Wayne Curley, is defined as the complex of programs, apps, operating systems, email, etc. produced by Google. I remember thinking 20 years ago that Microsoft was attempting the same thing. Somewhere along the way they got lost. So, if you want to comment on the blog, get yourself a Gmail account and the rest should be easy.

See you somewhere on the Googleplex!

Negative results

In the strange parlance of medicine, negative test results can be positive. The results of the bone marrow biopsy were all negative. I just heard this morning. There is no evidence of cancer!!! Even at the genetic level. The most advanched test, known as the FISH test, is capable of degermining if there are any genetic abnormalities in the bone marrow and none were detected. Gina and I both feel like we can resume breathing again.

The pumpkin patch

As I sit here with my morning coffee I am thinking how my life could change dramatically this week. If the bone marrow biopsy shows I have relapsed, I will be turned back into a leukemia patient just as quickly as that pumpkin turned into a carriage. My doctor has told me I'll have to start the gruesome treatment all over again.

The reaction of the doctor in charge of the clinical study has me worried. I know he is being cautious by ordering the bone marrow biopsy. He wants to rule out a relapse before deciding what to do about the low platelet levels. It's been 8 months since I was declared "in remission". I have a graph that shows this is the time period when most people relapse. The slope of the line is very steep as people turn back into pumpkins.

The graph shows that if I make it 2 years without a relapse I'm home free...free to push the idea of mortality back into the deep recess of conciousness where it belongs. That's where I want to be!