Kudos to you for being active! ET does not work the same in everyone, of course. I was in the 5-600s for many years. Did what I wanted. Just took aspirin.

When the platelets started to rise toward 1,000, I got really tired, started forgetting things, cut my teaching load, and had to retire at 63.

The HU helped restore some energy and stabilize platelets in 400s with only one or two jumps into the low 500s in the past 5 years. Mentally, I am much more with it.

Diet and mild exercise/stress reduction also helped.

I'm 70. I helped my husband trim branches and haul them to the street from a fallen tree in our yard yesterday. I paced myself, and I will need to take a couple days to recuperate.

But, see how I fell into the trap of bragging about how I'm powering through my ET? How I let you set the standard with your three weeks of wilderness camping and I felt like I had to counter with something tough I did so people didn't think I was a malingering and self-indulgent wussy?

Sure, my problem entirely for falling into that trap, but the "we gotta be fighters and win our cancer battle" language encourages it. And it's tough for MPN patients because our cancers are chronic and none if us are going to "win" or ring the bell when treatment ends.

I also believe people have every right to treat their ET with raw honey, coconut oil, and dry vodka martinis if they want. But I don't believe that all the treatments people talk about on cancer sites are equally effective or should be viewed as equally good choices.

I dunno. ET support groups always seem to take this turn: Somebody says they have a doctor who says ET is not cancer and the rest of us start googling to see if we've been duped. Or that HU is going to give you skin cancer and rot your guts out, so we start googling side effects, even if we've felt better on the drug. Or that we can't venture a scientifically informed opinion about alternative treatments because it's not supportive.

Just hoping this expresses some common frustrations and concerns of other ET patients.