Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Greetings from the outside. I'm happy to be reporting to you again from outside the confines of the hospital walls. It's been a very long week and I'm happy to see it move on. After spending roughly three weeks of possibly the best weeks of my life out of the hospital, I was sent back on last Sunday for what's called consolidation chemotherapy. I was under the impression that this type of treatment was fairly light in comparison to the others I've gone through, but that turned out to be completely wrong. As it goes, consolidation chemo is much stronger than any other type of chemo I had previously been on, including the FLAG chemo which put me in remission. The thought makes sense because you want to hit it with everything you've got to keep you in remission, but it was a difficult week. By far the toughest 5 day stretch I have had since I was pushed down this path, but as I said I am happy to see it gone.

As of now I am recovering at home and will continue to do so until October 17th. At that point I'll check back into the hospital and start the pre transplant treatments of chemo and radiation. The way the plan stands today, I will be undergoing the transplant on October 23rd. From there the story remains the same. 4-5 weeks of recovery in the hospital, we find a place to stay in San Diego for another 4-5 months.

That is pretty much what I have for you al as far as an update goes. Things are moving along and I'm happy to see that donor number 2 looks like it is really going to happen.

I'd like to thank everyone again for donating and taking part in the Light the Night Walk last weekend. I was so happy to be able to make it and see everyone. Your generosity, caring, thoughts, prayers...all of it was really overwhelming and I can't put into words how touched Evey and I were. That day is really what kept my head up last week during the hell I was going through and I have all of you to thank for that.

Take care everyone and go Angels and Cowboys!

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Happy Friday everyone. Once again, I am extremely happy to be typing this message from the comfort of my couch. Every minute I am out of the hospital gets better and better. It is a huge cliché, but it is certainly true. You really have to appreciate the small things in life if you are going to enjoy it. A breath of fresh air, the sunset, a walk around the block, the sunshine, quality time with friends and family…I could go on and on. In a weird way I feel lucky to be going through this because it has made me appreciate so much more.

So with that said, I received some bad news on Tuesday when I went down to the hospital for some blood tests and a visit with my doctor. Apparently, my donor’s doctor sent a message to my doctor saying they are having “medical complications” with the donor and they have to push the transplant out by 4-5 weeks. This is something they have never seen before so it obviously threw us all for a loop. As a result, we made the decision to pass on the original donor and go with one of the other two. If you remember, we had the search narrowed down to three donors who were all equally good, so the good news is I’m not giving up any quality. The bad news is everything now gets pushed out 4-5 weeks. So instead of me going in next Friday and prepping for my transplant the following week, I now have to go in next Friday for a round of consolidation chemotherapy, recover for three weeks, then hopefully be ready to go with another donor at the end of recovery. And that is a best case scenario dependant on whether or not they can fast track the new donor through the pre-transplant process.

Frustrating would be an understatement, but I just have to get used to the fact that issues like this that are going to pop up along the way, and I am going to have to deal with them accordingly. It’s certainly not the end of the world, but a month is a month. I still have to look at the bright side which is the fact that I have three high quality matches to begin with. There are a lot of people in my situation who wait many months to get any match. Luckily for me I have multiple options.

Outside of that, I feel great and my counts continue to climb. My white blood cell count is up to 5,700, red blood cell count is 3,500 and platelets are at a whopping 514,000. These are the big three indicators to look at, and all three look great. That’s about it everyone. I plan on enjoying my last week of freedom then getting ready for the hospital once again. Thanks for reading and take care.