I'm going to sit over here in the corner and, you know, WEEP.

My little 83 year old patient is kind of adorable, people. His picture on the demographics page, for one, makes me go, "AWWWWW!" because his old-school black plastic frames are all-askew and he's so clearly a vet with his "I've had this hair cut since I was in the military a bazillion years ago," very much like my poppies. And then on his patient history pages, he checked off good on the state of his general health and under it, "for my age (83)."

This is why it sucks to work in Leukemia all the time, aside from all the boss and political-doctor-pissing-contest bullshit that goes along with working in any type of research setting. Ultimately we're fighting a losing battle, especially when it comes to the acute forms. With chronic, we've found some drugs like Gleevec that "cure" the disease, but a LOT of the patients lose the response eventually. Plus there's the whole live longer syndrome, too, and the secondary cancers, and it's just, all kinds of WOE.

In case y'all weren't like aware, CANCER TOTES BLOWS.

( Here's a pic of Poppies and me when I was eight. Just for the hell of it, and because I just remembered I had uploaded it on LJ years ago. We were playing poker and it was still during Mom's smoking period so I used one of her cigarettes as a cigar. )