Day + 50 Eve

Happy day + 50 Eve everyone. Man, just about at the 50 day mark. That is pretty sweet I must say. I just read through some of the postings on the blog and I must say they still continue to make me smile. I am a pretty lucky guy to have all of you in my corner, and I know there are even more of you that don’t write. It’s funny, I can’t tell you how many times I run into people I don’t even know who read the blog on a regular basis. It’s a trip. My thanks go out to you as well. You guys are all awesome and I appreciate every word you say and write so please keep it up.

I have some pretty cool stuff to share with all of you tonight. At my hospital appointment on Monday, my doctor came to me with a letter from my donor. I seriously had it in my hand for 5 minutes before I finally started to read it. I don’t know why either. I guess I was a little afraid, unsure, nervous… about what I was about to read. Instead of picking out the highlights, I’ll just share the whole letter verbatim with you:

Sweden Oct 21st, 2008

Hi,

I’m a 44 years old man from Sweden. I’ve been a donor for bone marrow for about 15 years, but I haven’t donored before. When I was tested this time and was told it matched you, I didn’t hesitate a second to do the donor.

I’m sure you’ll do fine and wish you the best of luck during the process. If it’s ok with you, it would be nice to hear from you in the future.

We could exchange email addresses or so through our hospitals.

Good luck from Sweden.

I’m not embarrassed to say I cried when I read this, and still continue to well up every time I read it or even talk about it. This is the most powerful, impactful, moving letter that has ever been written to me and I wish I could put into words what it means to me, but I can’t. Everything would be understating by a mile how it has affected me. All I can say is I truly feel as though I have an angel on my shoulder, and that angel lives in Sweden. What am I going to write back to him? I have no idea. I mean where the heck do I start? Thanks for the new life. Thanks for the sacrifice. I really have no idea, but he will be getting a letter ASAP. And the kicker to the whole experience…the date he wrote the letter, Oct 21st, is my birthday, and there is no way he knew that due to donor privacy laws. If that isn’t amazing I don’t know what is.

As far as the results of the latest bone marrow test go, I’m still waiting for the results that show how much of my immune system belongs to me and my donor. Now they are saying I should have those results back by the end of next week. Either way, I’ll report back to you as soon as I have them. All blood counts continue to be exactly where they should be. WBC is at 4.9, HCT is at 31.8 with Platelets coming in at 147,000. With all of that said, I did have an absolutely horrible night on Monday night. Probably the worst night I’ve had in months and rivals some of the worst I’ve had during my chemo battles. Luckily it was very short lived and I was back at it about 24 hours later. It was a very painful reminder that this fight is far from over and I still have a long way to go. Regardless, I made it through Wednesday and I’ll make it through whatever else is thrown at me.

Take care guys and thanks for reading. We’ll catch up again soon.