As each day passes we get more information about Bill's cancer. Today the Mayo Clinic diagnosis was confirmed. The cancer is a very nasty and aggressive clone of cells.

Bill had a rough go of it last evening as the course of steroids he has been on ended. The original symptoms, most notably very swollen and painful lymph nodes, have returned. We saw the oncologist in Olympia today and in consultation with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) doc we saw yesterday they agreed to put him back on steroids for a few days so he would remain reasonably healthy going into the chemotherapy. We'll be doing appointments with docs each day early next week. Then we will go back up to SCCA for one more consult on Wednesday, see the oncologist in Olympia early on Thursday morning, and then Bill will be admitted to the hospital (St. Peter in Olympia) on Thursday for a two to three week period during which he will receive the chemotherapy and begin to recover from it. In the meantime they will begin working on identifying a donor for the stem cell transplant that will occur sometime (we're not sure yet how long) after the chemo. A number of people have asked and we are not yet certain about the process for identifying donors but know that there is a national registry. We will learn more about that on Wednesday

We remain positive and know you will send good thoughts Bill's way.