Who'da thunk???

Wellst, I've been 63 for over a week now and I don't feel any different than I did the last week of bein' 62...but I feel a whole lot better than I did for a lot of the time I was 62 and even some of bein' 61!

You know, I think it was on my last post that I used the term, "cancer survivor".
That rocked me.
I remember back in March of 2010 when I was diagnosed and I just knew I was gonna die and I was gonna die a relatively slow, agonizingly painful and ugly death. I mean, if you have cancer that's how you "hop the twig" as an ol' English gal friend of mine used to call "kickin' the bucket." afore she "hopped the twig", right? That's how both my folks went and so that was my experience.
So, now I know different and I have a new experience.

And my new experience is that I am a cancer survivor. I still have Multiple Myeloma and I always will...maybe. Who knows what they'll come up with in the next few years.
Right now I'm officially in what they call "forced remission."
They can't go in and kill off all the Multiple Myeloma cells because in order to do that they'd have to kill all my bone marrow which would not bode well for surviving that procedure, so I'm in the beginning of a three year chemo regimen designed to keep the Multiple Myeloma cells in check. I get my blood checked once a week to make sure that's what's happening, although the past few months was a bit of an anomaly in that I went several months without any chemo as my platelet count had tanked and they couldn't/wouldn't give me chemo until my platelet level climbed significantly. You run around with a platelet count of about 140 something-or-other and mine at one time skidded to 17! When I climbed over 100 they felt that was appropriate to begin the chemo again.
I don't go in for a chemo drip but rather take a pill at home...22 days on and then 8 days off with a batch of steroids every Monday.
These pills, Revlimid retail for, guess what?
$7,345 for my 22 day supply!
Thank goodness for insurance and thank goodness for Obama Care! I don't give a rats derriere what anyone thinks of him or his health care plan, all I know is that as of July 2010, insurance companies are no longer allowed to drop anyone's coverage for anything other than non payment of premiums. Last I added them up, and it's been a while, my medical bills were well over a million dollars and there's no doubt in my mind or the Doc's minds that they would have booted me long before they had to pay out anything close to what they have paid and I would have "hopped the twig" and I darest not think ow what that might have looked like.
So, I'm a very happy 63 year old cancer survivor, and I think I'll stay that way if it's okay with you!