Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Happy birthday big bro and Paulina. I bet the two of you never thought you would celebrate your birthdays with 10 people crammed in a hospital room in La Jolla. Well, it's all about the people at the party so it was a great time. I hope you enjoyed it. Steak and Guinness on me when I get out of here, maybe a few...of each.

So I wanted to give you all a bit of a deeper dive into the information about the transplant donors. I met again with the doctor today and the news is really good. Apparently I was a perfect 10 out of 10 match with 15 people in the database which was a first. The doc said he had never seen anything like it, so what was initially bad news with my brother's non-match turned into great news with the unrelated match. They now have the luxury of fine tuning the match with three extra pieces of criteria...gender, age and blood type which brought us down to a short list of 3 people. To make the situation even more ideal, these three donors have already gone through the 3 weeks of pre-transplant tests so from a timing perspective, it couldn't be better. Good stuff all around.

So what I need to do now is get into remission. It's that simple. If round 2 puts me there I could be looking at a transplant start timeline of 6 weeks which would be absolutely phenomenal. If I end up needing a 3rd round to get into remission which is a possibility, that timeline could be pushed out by a month or so. But to be quite honest with you, that will be a very easy month knowing I have 3 "perfect" matches waiting for me when I do eventually hit remission. For now focusing on a round 2 success, the donor situation made a round 3 scenario that much more tolerable.

As far as my condition goes, things are good. I'm really enjoying my short but effective morning workouts with the weights and I have had very little all around discomfort. I still get headaches every now and then but those get taken care of pretty quickly with the assortment of remedies they have stocked up down here. The worst part about this whole situation is not being able to read a book outside in the sun breathing in fresh air. That is the number 1 thing I miss most, but I know those days are right around the corner.

Thanks for reading everyone, take care and be well.