Day + 79

Here we are at day 79 since my transplant and at times it feels like yesterday. Sometimes that's a good thing and other times it's not so good. I had this vision in my head that my recovery would be completely linear and as time progressed, so would my recovery. Things couldn't be further from reality. What I have found is that my road to recovery has left turns, right turns, sometimes u-turns, hills, valleys...the whole deal. These turns, hills and valleys manifest themselves in random pains, nausea, complete loss of appetite, weight fluctuation; the list could go on and on. My point to all this, is now that I know my recovery isn't going to follow a straight line, time does not necessarily equal get better; I think I'll be better equipped to handle this stuff in 2009. At least that's what I'm going with.

My counts are all looking good as usual and in fact, I may even be able to start pulling back on some of the key anti-rejection medications. If that turns into a trend and we continue to pull back on more of these meds that would be huge. One thing I really want to get away from is all of these medications and this could hopefully be a start to that.

Some more good news which is actually pretty funny to me is my hair is starting to grow back. But it's like fuzzy little baby hair. Evey and I are getting a kick out of it. I can joke about it all I want, but in reality it feels pretty damn good. It is visual proof that my body is moving on and recovering from the poison of the chemo and radiation. As I said in my last message or a couple of messages back, the small victories are what count and the fact that this one is tangible makes it even better.

Now I just need to get my weight up. I'm not sure if any of you have experienced what it feels like to not have any appetite, ever. It is miserable, especially when you NEED to get your weight up for obvious health reasons. Right now I am about 25 pounds underweight, and any kind of food at any given time of the day just sounds terrible. What do you do when just the thought of food makes you sick? Well, the first thing you do is force down what you have to, at least to maintain your weight. The last thing you want to do is to lose more weight. Let me tell you first hand that this is torture, especially coming from someone who loves food. It’s like a terrible curse. Anyway, I spoke with my doctor about it and he gave me some liquid medication to help with my appetite. I've been on it now for the past 4 days and that with Evey's non-stop cooking and putting food in front of me, it seems to be working. I've gained 3 pounds back this last week and feel like I can keep more food down than before so I feel like I'm on the right track.

That's about it for now. As you can see I'm still in the thick of the fight and the last month or so has been a huge challenge both mentally and physically, but progress is being made. Thanks for sticking with me…