We’ve all heard it said; there are times when you can’t explain it, there’s nothing you can do about it, when your number is up, your number is up. You accept it, if you can, and you move on as best you can.

I went back to the clinic and they showed me the results of the new blood tests. It hit me like a punch in the gut. Literally. A hypodermic shot in the stomach that stimulated my bone marrow to produce white cells. My numbers are up. My white cell numbers, my neutrophil numbers. Way up.

The neutrophil count (the number of the cells with the white hats that fight infection) which had forced me to sit wrapped in a blanket, with my nose pressed against the window watching the world go by, shunning all humanity (not unlike the way I am most of the time, come to think of it) had gone from 0.2 on Monday to 10.0 on Friday and down to 6.4 by Monday. For those few odd folks among you who weigh yourselves more often than you get blood tests, know that the normal range for ANC is 1.6 to 7.0.

My white cell count had gone from 1.4 to 18.8 to 8.6. On the off chance you haven’t memorized it, the normal range of white count is 4.0 to 10.0. So there was a day or so in there where I was bulletproof. Presuming my aura could have been transmitted, I should have seized on the moment to hold a revival meeting and slap people on the head to heal them.

In the roller coaster ride that is chronic lymphocytic leukemia, that shot is an E ticket. If it didn’t cost something between a house payment and a house, I’d keep a six pack by the bedside.

It also makes your bones ache, presumably because it’s taking a whip to your bone marrow and making it work overtime. I got that shot last Monday and by Thursday my hips and back were aching like crazy. Luckily, it only bothered me if I sat, or stood or lay down.

But it worked.

Now then, the upshot of all this math is that I am once again eligible to take the drugs in my clinical trial. Drugs that were suspended last week when my numbers were down so much my number was up. I sat through my sixth and final infusion today and went home with a month’s supply of ABT-199.

Next month, I’m back again, just to be sure I can find the place, and to have a CT scan and a bone marrow biopsy. We might have the results of those in time to hang on the tree.