Greetings from Houston

It's Friday, but this is the first day I've bothered to check into the blog. I'm here in Houston visiting my friend Lars, who's battling Leukemia. He's part of a clinical trial to see if an experimental drug will move him into remission so that he can have a bone marrow transplant. He's been down here since early February and is getting a bit frustrated.

The last batch of treatment didn't get the job done, so he's now working with the folks at the University of Texas - M. C. Anderson Cancer Center. If they can get his white cell count down to a certain level, he can have the translplant. THey've had a donor lined up for a couple months, so it's just a matter of getting his counts down.

Since I arrived on Monday, his schedule has consisted of:

Monday: clinical checkup
Tuesday: Took 2 units of blood and 1 unit of platelets (7 hours to complete)
Wednesday: day off from the hospital
Thursday: clinical checkup + 1 unit of platelets
Friday: day off

We (Lars, his wife Monica and I) drove down the to the gulf and spent an hour at the Battle of Jacinto memorial, which is the place where Sam Houston defeated Santa Ana in the 1800's. There is an obelisk that's taller than the Washington Monument in D.C. there.

Lars has had a rough go of it. He is easily fatigued during this latest round of treatment, so got him back to his apartment after our field trip. He's a thousand miles from home, away from his children, in a strange place. It's something I couldn't wish on my worst enemy, but it's something one of my best friends is enduring.

Monica's mom and sister are flying their two kids down tonight, so they'll hopefully provide some change of pace for the two of them.

I'm flying home on Monday morning, so I have a couple of days to lend a little more moral support.