Skip to main content

Day +60: another milestone reached with a ways to go

Happy New Years,

It’s been a couple weeks since my last post, as it has been a mostly flat section of the process.  For the majority of December, I was fighting gout (big toes) and joint (knee) pain while my blood counts were steady but still below normal levels. 

They find that joint pain post-SCT concentrates on prior problem areas.  In my case, that was centered on the right knee that took a beating over the years from skiing and running.  Knock on wood, but these issues are mostly under control as of the end of December and I’m happy to be recommencing my rehab. 

My white blood cell count (and importantly ANC count) have stayed in the normal range for the majority of December, but the red blood cells and platelets continued to be well below normal.  Today, there was a good sign that these are both on an upward trend and I’m starting to feel it in the form of increasing energy.

The news today is that I had my Central Venous Catheter line removed, marking the end of regular infusions alongside the Day +60 milestone.   I also confirmed with my doctor that we’ll need to remain in Houston for the entire 100 day post-SCT period.  This means, we have a point on the horizon to return to Denver over President's day weekend around February 14.  Writing this, it seems like a long time however Day +100 has always been the plan as MD Anderson carefully manages my care after transplant. 

Cheers to positive thoughts and energy for a prosperous 2021.

Gary

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 5, 2021 at 9:13 PM

    More encouraging every month Gary, great to hear!! We bumped into Eric and Goose this past weekend, sounds you all had a nice holiday together. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJanuary 6, 2021 at 2:43 PM

    Another positive step! So glad to hear you are moving in the right direction. If you need another good documentary to watch check out Sled Dog Soldiers (Netflix).

    ReplyDelete
  3. ManiJanuary 7, 2021 at 1:34 AM

    Happy New Year, Gary! Best wishes for a great 2021 with good health, peace, happiness and prosperity.

    Glad to know that you are making great progress towards complete recovery, keep it up. We can’t wait to see you back in Denver soon!

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 9, 2021 at 8:00 AM

    Thanks for the update Gary. You're going to make a full recovery. Keep up the great effort. :) :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Story

 Hello Family and Friends, Thank you for following my blog and your love and support over the years and especially now during my Journey to a Cure.  I thought I would start this BLOG by telling my story and how I got to the point where a bone marrow transplant is the next best step in my cancer battle.  And hopefully a long term, durable cure. In September 2008, during a routine physical exam, my white blood cell count came back unusually high. The next month was busy with many doctor appointments, tests, learning, and ultimately a diagnosis - at the age of 44 I had cancer and specifically CLL or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.   CLL is usually an older patient disease, a slowly progressing disease, and at the time already had some good treatment options.  Many CLL patients never need treatment and I had the “good marker”, 13q deletion to be technical. CLL is not hereditary (although my Uncle Marc did have CLL later in his life) and like many cancers the exact cau...
8 comments
Read more

Day +18: Engraftment!

The MD Anderson blood testing process is a factory.  When you go in for a blood draw, there is a bank of over 50 stations ready to draw your blood.  Combined with all the test requests from the hospital rooms like mine, from the buildings full of clinics, blood donations,... it’s amazing they can turn around results within an hour.    Yesterday (Day +17), they had a technical issue that backed up this process and had to redraw my blood late in the afternoon.   This turned out to be a godsend as the result was a White Blood Cell (WBC) count of 0.1.  This result, repeated and confirmed this morning, means I currently have 100 WBCs per liter of blood.  The average person walks around with 5 liters of blood and within the normal range of 5-10 thousand WBCs per liter.  So, I have around 500 white blood cells on the way to a normal level of over 25,000. It’s not much, but something to build upon.  And most importantly, it means the engraftment proc...
6 comments
Read more

The Process

In prior posts, I’ve referred to the “process” of the bone marrow transplant.  And quite the complex, multiple step and lengthy process it is. The first step is to repeat a series of outpatient tests to confirm that I’m fit for the transplant.  This is ongoing for the week of October 5th at MD Anderson.  At the end of this testing, I will get a central venous line (CVC) inserted for the next steps and ultimately the donor stem cell infusion. I’ll check into the hospital on October 10 to begin the second step which is referred to as “conditioning”.  This involves chemotherapy to bring your immune system to zero in order to prepare for its replacement with the donor’s immune system.   During this time, the donor will be going through a procedure called Apheresis to harvest his stem cells from his peripheral blood. The cells will be cryogenically frozen and transported to MD Anderson.  The donor cells were collected on October 7 and now on the way to Houston. ...
3 comments
Read more