Day + 174

Good morning everyone. I usually write these late at night so it's kind of weird saying that. I guess I'll start by saying I'm happy I was able to give you all a nice laugh. It seems you all enjoy hearing about me wallowing in pain and misery. I know, I know, I brought that all upon myself, but how about a little sympathy for the kid. Of course I'm joking. I think I got the biggest laugh of all out of that situation. And trust me, even laughing soon turned into crying due to the extreme pain I was in. Anyhow, I'm glad you were all entertained by that. I can't say I did anything like that during this period so my muscles have been nice and normal.

Things have been good, but I have been battling an outbreak on my skin which is a reaction to the sun caused by my medication and the chemo I went through. Luckily these aren't abrasions or anything like that, it basically shows up as redness, but it's all over my stomach, chest, back, shoulders and face. It is a little bit itchy but luckily very manageable. My doctors took a skin biopsy out of my back last week to make sure it is GVHD (Graft vs. Host Disease) which is a technical term for rejection. Yes it is rejection, but it is nothing to be too concerned about. Of course if I don't do anything about it, it can spread and get worse, but I am treating it regularly with a strong cream so it should be gone in no time. It's been here for a couple of weeks so I'm hoping the end is near. We shall see.

As I said above, things have been good but I still have some bad days mixed in every now and then. As I get further and further away from my transplant date, it gets more and more frustrating for me to have these bad days. I know they are a part of the process and I just have to deal with them and hope they become more and more infrequent. With that said, my medication has a lot to do with how frequent those bad days are and unfortunately, with this skin situation going on, some of my medications have been increased. This will hopefully be short term and I'll be on the road to lowering my meds again in no time.

As far as my counts go, they dropped a bit last week which goes hand in hand with the GVHD I'm experiencing. My white blood cells dropped from 5 to 4.2 with my platelets following suit going from 191 to 157. My red blood cells counts and hematocrit stayed in the same range of 12 and 36 respectively. I fully expect to have these counts go back to normal as I fix this GVHD problem.

Well my friends, it's another beautiful day in sunny so cal so make sure you get out there at some point today and enjoy it. You owe it to yourself. Take care everyone and make sure you either start smiling or keep smiling. We'll catch up again soon.