My Second Bone Marrow Aspirate

We're fourteen days into it, now, not exactly two weeks from when we'd arrived at the hospital, sunny, smiling, ready to tackle the world, but two weeks, exactly, from the very first drips of daunorubicin. It's our third Monday, and I'm getting my first bone marrow aspirate since England.

First of all, the bleeding is no longer a concern. I'm still not producing any of my own platelets, but the almost daily infusion of other people's platelets (I'm down with OPP) has pretty much ensured that this aspirate won't leave me bleeding from my back like the last one.

Second, I'm lying on my stomach when the needle goes into the small of my back. There's the local anesthetic, of course, little bee sting here, there, so I don't actually feel the stick. Pressure's not so bad, either. Probably helps that I'm not on my side. My hips are actually up against something solid. Resistance is strong. The needle pushes through bone. Marrow is extracted.

This is the important test.

My first aspirate was meant to determine whether or not I had leukemia. But now that the chemo has stopped dripping for a week, and I'm not showing too many adverse side effects, we are ready for a different kind of test. We're not using the results of the aspirate to confirm what we already know.

This is the big one, the test to see if the chemotherapy actually did what it was supposed to do: chase the leukemia from my system.