June 11, Wednesday

I try and ride the stationary bike every day to maintain some muscle tone.

No real medical news to report.  My ANC (white bloods cells) remain at zero, which is not unexpected.  I don't need any blood transfusions or platelets today.  

I had a friend coming by after 11:00, so I got going a bit earlier this morning on the bike.  I managed one hour and 21 miles, sweaty and winded.  Then I need a tech to wrap up my right arm PICC line line so I could take a shower.  After the bike the shower is a chore.  They checked my vitals and 111 showed up for the pulse.  Far better than the false 219 from a couple days ago, but higher than is comfortable.  Doc said my pulse is above baseline because of low blood volume.  I weighed in at 175.3 pounds at 5:00 am.  Sherry and I have good friends, Denny and Paula, who live in CO.  If I get to choose the bone marrow doner, it would be Denny.  He has lots of fast twitch muscles.

I read a little booklet that my friends Juan and Anita gave me, Facing Illness With Hope.  It dealt with some initial reactions to receiving very bad news, such as, confusion, anger at God, and asking why did this happen to me.  While this hasn't been fun and I've thrown up a couple times and endured chemo night mares and wild bouts of peeing, I know God loves me.  James 1:3 says that the testing of faith produces endurance.  And anyone who knows me (ultra marathons and cross-country bike ride), knows I love endurance.  Yes, my life has been interrupted, but not by cancer and the transformation I hold on to is not lymphoma to leukemia.  Donald Miller wrote a book called A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.  It put the Biblical story of Job into prospective.  God was saying, I know what I'm doing and this whole thing is not about you.  Job found contentment and joy outside the comfort, health, or even stability.  He learned to care about the story more than he did about himself.  There was a great Victor Frankl quote, "I'm a tree in a story about a forest and the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.  For those who read my XC blog, you may remember it.  I believed it when things were going well; I believe now when my life is threatened.  I listened to a good sermon from Paster Todd Wagner, Watermark Church.  He said, "Faith always looks like this; it always
produces like this."