Meanwhile, back on the HIV front . . .

If I had teeth, they would have been clenched tight when I clicked on the email I received from Dr. B1 early Wednesday morning.

Results from last Friday's biopsy were promised by Wednesday and I wasn't eager to get any bad tidings from my doctor. But even as I opened the email and read the words "Good news," my reaction fell short of unbridled joy.

Dr. B1 was telling me the best news I could have possibly expected to hear, but there was a cloud beneath that silver lining.

The night before, while poking around in my online medical records at Kaiser's member website, I saw that my latest HIV lab results were available. I clicked on that email and scrolled through the numbers. They didn't look good.

As I've been grappling with this cancer offensive, it looked as if my HIV had been running amok. According to the lab results posted online, my CD4 count had taken a deep nose dive, plummeting to 80 from more than 400 just seven months earlier.

I nervously clicked out of the lab results and sent a message to HIV provider: "My HIV numbers don't look very good," I wrote. "What do you think?"

The next day brought the good news about the biopsy, but my HIV situation weighed heavily on my mind.

Later that morning, my HIV doctor sent a reply to my email: "Your HIV is perfect," he wrote. "The HIV viral load is less than 48 copies, indicating complete suppression of the virus by the medications. Your overall 'infection fighting cell' number (WBC) remains slightly below your baseline, likely due to a residual effect of the chemotherapy. This is normal. It is not by any means at a critically low level. Because of your lower WBC numbers, your absolute T cell number is lower. However, the percentage of T cells (19 percent) is virtually unchanged from the values in January (18 percent).

"In other words," my HIV doc concluded, "your HIV is exactly the same, still doing great."

The lesson here is to let my doctor interpret my lab results before I leap to any conclusions.

So with HIV laying low, and cancer apparently having flown the coop, I can concentrate on my recovery while watching the undetectables, to paraphrase that doctor of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Costello.

It may still be some time before I can shed my trach and G-tube and talk and eat and drink through my mouth again —and there remains a possibility that the damage caused by cancer and radiation will be permanent— but I've come this far and I'm prepared to go the distance.

Under the knife again

Maybe Dr. B1 defused bombs for the Army in Baghdad before he took up head-and-neck surgery.

Because it could not have been easy on Friday in Kaiser's operating room for Dr. B1 to get his delicate instruments past my steel-trap jaws and deep enough into my kisser to capture some of the suspect tissue that lurks there.

If you want the Cliffs Notes version of today's post, here it is: T.G.I.Saturday.

I'd been jittery about how Friday's surgery would go ever since I learned early this month that another biopsy was in my future. While I won't know the results of my biopsy till next week, the procedure went well.

I remember the whole experience with Friday's surgery in stark, high-definition clarity —all the way up to the very beginning, that is.

What I mean is: I remember boarding the Red Line in Universal City shortly after 5 a.m.; I remember getting off the train at Sunset and Vermont; I remember trying to maneuver around a cyclist on the escalator ("I can't move!" he barked, a minute before he and his bike magically regained the miracle of movement at the top of the escalator); I remember walking through the doors of Kaiser's brand-new, $600-million medical center for the very first time; I remember checking in at the admitting department; and I remember asking a pregnant woman to move a sweater so I could take one of the last remaining seats in the waiting area.

I remember getting a plastic band wrapped around my wrist; I remember stuffing my clothes into a plastic bag and donning the standard-issue cap, gown and hospital booties; I remember the nurse unfolding a blanket fresh with warmth from the dryer over my body; I remember her thumping the back of my left hand so she could get a vein for an IV; I remember being interviewed by a steady parade of anesthesiologists and others on my doctor's team; I remember being asked for my name and birth date at least a dozen times.

I remember Dr. B1 stopping by my bed to greet me and review my charts, shaking my hand to say hello and squeezing my toes to say goodbye.

And finally I remember one of the nurses telling me that the medicine that she was feeding into my IV would help me relax. She then brought up the metal rails on my hospital bed and, with help from one of the anesthesiologists, pushed me down a series of winding corridors toward the room where my surgery would take place.

That last scene I've watched a million times on "E.R.," except the irony is, I've never seen a single episode of that show. (If I had mentioned "Ben Casey" instead of "E.R.," some of you might have clicked away to a blog by a younger, hipper cancer victim.)

I remember thinking that the ride in my bed to the operating room was taking too long, but maybe the nurses just push the bed aimlessly around the floor until they know that I am asleep. Because I don't remember entering the operating room. My next conscious memory is opening my eyes in the recovery room, having my vitals taken by the nurse who still thinks I resemble Ben Stiller. Maybe it's a Jew thing; that nurse kinda resembles Julie Kavner.

Dr. B1 says that he won't know the results from the biopsy till Wednesday, so I'm looking at several days of biopsy news hanging over my head.

I have plenty to do to keep me busy in the meantime. Seems like the anesthesia is affecting my ability to pee again, so baby-sitting my bladder and taking Flomax is priority No. 1 (I've used that pun before and I'm not ashamed to use it again).

Darning socks is the next task on my list.

The next time a doctor or anyone else feels like squeezing my toes, I may not be wearing brand-new baby blue hospital booties. I better be prepared.