A HUGE Day!!!

Dr. Grinblatt had GREAT news today....my blood cell counts were normal! According to him this is incredible, after two rounds of R-ICE chemotherapy my bone marrow has responded amazingly well! Because my third round of chemo will not occur until July 28th due to scheduling conflicts with the transplant unit, I get next week off.

Dr. Grinblatt suggested I head to our lakehouse in Northern Wisconsin!!! YAY!!!! He warned me that I'm still a very sick man and had to be extremely careful about infections, crowds, and still be carefil about no bruising or cutting and no strenuous exercise. But I can go, so long as I'm back in time to get my PET scan and Echocardiogram completed. So we're going up Saturday and coming back Wednesday night, the tests are scheduled for Thursday.

Then, to add the cherry on top, we got the HLA test results back on my brother, Chris. He's an EXACT match! All 6 factors, which means, should this stem cell transplant fail and we have to have a donor stem cell transplant, he's my donor! This is a HUGE gift!!! I'm so lucky, because it means there's one more bullet in the proverbial treatment gun.

My cancer is extrememly difficult because its currently considered incurable. A donor transplant is the only way we could look to cure me of my disease. We cannot attempt it at this time though, because the risk/reward ratio is not worth it. There's a 1-2% mortality rate with an autologous transplant(using my stem cells), while there's a 25% mortality rate with a donor transplant, even though were an exact match.

This is why we still need support for cancer research, specifically blood cancer research. Our overall strategy in battling my disease is to knock it into remission for as long as we can, and keep doing so, hoping that research will provide me a cure one day. Honore and I have done our homework and the best charity we have found to support this mission is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, hence our annual fundraising drive in support of the Leukemia Cup Regatta.

By the way, this year the 12th Annual Chicago Leukemia Cup Regatta will be presented by The Rosamond Fund. Thanks to a wonderfully generous donation from my mother, Rosamond Wilhite. The event will be August 22-23rd at Columbia Yacht Club. www.sailtravis.com if you would like to make a donation or get more information about the event check out www.columbiayachtclub.com and click on Leukemia Cup/Poker Run.

Man, what a GREAT day!!! Between my bone marrow busting its butt and making me look like a hero to the news about having a donor for future treatements, today's been a banner day. However, like Grinblatt said, I'm still a sick man and am going to bed because I'm exhausted.

Cheers!

Love,

Travis