A Mess of Acronyms

It may seem strange but when I re-read the last two posts I realized that I never mentioned my dad's final diagnosis. Initially, he was diagnosed with ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia). His original doc in Alabama was a little unsure, though, whether it was ALL or AML (myeloid, a.k.a. myelogenous) because the cells seemed to have characteristics of both. Turns out that it was ABL (biphenotypic), which means exactly what it sounds like -- it's a weird mix of both ALL and AML. No wonder it was so hard to treat. The treatments for the two types are somewhat different. This hybrid makes up only about 3% of the total number of leukemia cases, and its survival rate is incredibly low. It's basically untreatable. When we found out (about 2 weeks before my dad died) I was pretty unhappy that the docs at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville hadn't figured it out til then -- I mean, they're supposed to be experts, right? When I had more time to think about it, though, I realized that we had been given a gift. If my dad hadn't received any treatment (even for the wrong type of cancer), he would likely have died much sooner and we wouldn't have had that time to come to terms with what was happening. Sure, he wouldn't have suffered as much from the treatment side effects, and I hated that for him. But, I think he would have wanted to make that sacrifice to have the extra time. Besides it being nice for us to have him around longer, he got to say goodbyes, to make plans (he planned his funeral with an old family friend, and had a list of hymns so long that we would have been in the church for days to get through it all!), and to comfort and prepare us all for his death. Anyways, I just wanted to remember that. It helps me get through some of the tough times to think that we snuck some extra time.