transplant

Feeling Pretty Darn Good!

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It seems the better I feel the harder it is to keep folks updated on how I’m doing. Now that I am feeling better I have more options to do other things other than to sit and think about how bad I feel. Now, mostly I sit around and read and write and take walks with the wife and eat all of the delicious, healthy, cancer destroying foods that she prepares for me. So that’s why I haven’t been blogging or tweeting as much. Besides, it’s redundant for me to keep posting: feeling good again today day after day. But since I’ve stopped getting the regular doses of chemo and I’ve been taken off of most of my meds, that’s exactly how I feel. In fact, I feel better than I have in a long time, even since before my diagnosis.

Yesterday I met with my longitudinal doctor, that is, the doctor who has been my consultant and adviser since I was first diagnosed and who will be with me until the end. I have been seen by a boatload of other doctors for a boatload of different reasons, but it is my longitudinal doctor who I depend on most. I met with him and his boss. The purpose of this visit was merely a formality to give me one last checkup and their final diagnosis and authorization for me to proceed with my transplant. Everything is good. My counts are perfect and based upon all the tests I’ve had…spinal taps and bone marrow biopsies…the amount of cancer in my body is less than 0.04% or something like that. Pretty good, indeed.

I have only one more consult with a doctor between now and when I get admitted back into the hospital on 3/23/10. The consult is for the heart and as far as I’m concerned its just a waste of time…an evil plot to make sure I don’t stay away from the hospital too long.

Like I said, on the 23rd, a week before my transplant, I get re-admitted to the hospital so I can begin getting juiced up with some new kind of chemo. This kind will completely kill my bone marrow in preparation for the transplant. I’m definitely not looking forward to the chemo crud again, but it will mean I am one step closer to getting to the transplant and beyond. Again…pretty good, indeed.

So, as far as my blogging and tweeting go, no news is good news. I reckon once I get juiced up again I’ll be back to complaining on a regular basis as to how bad I feel. Misery loves company.

The Registry Works!

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My wife ran into my doctor this morning while walking about the hospital. After exchanging pleasantries and having a discussion about setting up an appointment for me to meet the new head doctor of oncology, my wife asked my doctor what he thought about the possibilities of the match for my bone marrow transplant.

The doctor said the match is good news, of course, and then he went on to explain that out of the initial eight that were targeted from the registry for additional screening, there were actually two exact matches: the one MUD (Matched Unrelated Donor) that has us all excited, and one other. Unfortunately though, the one other match cannot be used. It cannot be used because the match is me.

The National Bone Marrow Registry and screening process really works. I do not remember when I registered but after all of these years it was still able to find me as a match for myself. Finding out I was a match for myself makes me both happy and a little sad. It makes me happy to know that the system works. No matter how long someone sits around in the system waiting, if their type is a match, they will be found. But it makes me sad in the sense that after all these years I was never found as a match for someone in need. And now, even if I come up as a match, I never can be of help, not even to myself.

Visit www.marrow.org for more information about the Bone Marrow Donor program.

Donor Update – 1/20/10

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Email excerpt from my Bone Marrow Donor Coordinator:

When dealing with national and international registries it takes a long time compared to family members who arrive ASAP.

World Wide I only found 8 potential matches; of samples we requested we only received 2 of them this week; they are in typing now. I do not know when the others will arrive or if they are available; we have not heard anything from the other 6.

In a perfect world I will have 3 matches but we will not know until the Class II and High Resolution typing is complete if they match. If I find 3 matches I will put them on hold.