Yippee!

Above is a flyer for the movie  made by Mark Blackman (incidentally a second cousin of Cate Fisher). Mark has single-mindedly pursued his dreams. Do go, if you can. I will have to wait for the DVD!


Dear Friends and Family,

We're on! We went to Mt. Sinai today as directed two days ago and after a lot of questions, mainly the same ones as usual, about such things as night sweats: two changes  of nightshirts (Dr. M: That's not a little!) and some doubt on Dr. M's part about proceeding, I finally was accepted. He was flabbergasted and annoyed that I had not called him about having chest pains and going to our cardiologist/general practitioner, Dr. G, on Monday. I had complained of chest pains when walking this past Sunday in the NYC with my wheelie, finally told Merwin I had been experiencing this unpleasant and painful sensation for a while. Merwin called our doctor, who wasn't able to see me till the end of the day—8 p.m. Neither the EKG nor listening to my heart indicated anything wrong, but I will have an echo cardiogram on Monday. After examining me, Dr. M. said, "I promised your son [he meant Harvey] that I would take good care of you, and I assured him that I would be as vigilant about you as I would be for my own mother.” He also mentioned that the trial meant a great deal to him, professionally, as well as to me personally.

The infusion is called GC 1008, Not too helpful a name. But it is not chemo (Dr. M. told me to stop the Hydrea] when we began the preliminary examinations a few weeks ago; My drug is a protein antibody, infused. With luck it will reduce my spleen, which is now so large I can't tie my sneakers, and reduce the fibrosis in my bone marrow. I am proud to be the first to be exposed to this drug for myelofibrosis and glad that it has already been tried on other fibrotic conditions (e.g. liver, kidney).

As usual, everyone is very good to me. Alice hovered over me to make sure everything was going well. Amy came in to say hello and bring goodies. I go again next Thursday, but no infusion, just an examination. But I am call Dr. M.'s cell phone if anything untoward shows up—especially on my skin.

Now to backtrack a little: We went to NYC on the weekend and met Michelle for dinner and the next day met her twin, Rachael, for brunch, along with Tony, a great friend of the family, and his dance partner Meta. I found myself to be so weak that I could not do more: no walk to our lovely Bryant Park, all dolled up for Winter. At the moment I feel more energized, I suppose by the excitement of the trial.


Yesterday, a somewhat small group of friends met for our monthly reading session. Supper was at Kiraku, for which Merwin joined us, and then our meeting. I read something lame, but at least I wrote. Everyone else had wonderful, moving pieces. Kathryn wrote about her visit to Turkey with Antonio, Barbara about Ruby, Anna about her gifted mother and others, Toby about the bible and the incidence of verbal variations among the texts. Meta read her own work and that of her students in her Goddess class.

Now to supper!

Love to all,
Bernice