Yesterday the staff at Stanford confirmed that my transplanted stem cells had engrafted into my bone marrow and were starting to produce new blood cells. The transplant worked. They unhooked me from the infusion bag I’d been attached to for 11 days (a great thing). Our next appointment at Stanford is Friday, and if everything continues on track, at that time they will release us from having to stay in […]
This will be a dull and simple post, because that’s the way my mind is right now, dull and simple. I never imagined I could feel this fatigued. It’s as if every bit of excess energy I ever had has been sucked out of my body, leaving only the small residual necessary to barely function: get up, walk around, eat (a little), shower, go to my Stanford appointments, read, watch […]
It’s a big day today, as I get the second of my large chemo blasts this afternoon. This second chemo agent is called Melphalan, and is the more toxic and side-effect producing of the two. So far I’ve tolerated the first chemo agent fairly well. My biggest complaint today is that my 24/7 friend the mini-infusion pump has blimped me up by adding 10 pounds of water weight, so I’m […]
To start off, I was overwhelmed by all of the kind, loving, encouraging responses to the last post. I love you all and can’t tell you how much your support means to me and Suzie. I’m thinking of suggesting to the Stanford Autologous BMT folks that I be hired (for a sufficient fee of course) to rewrite portions of their patient manual (available here, although I wouldn’t recommend it) to […]
The second phase of my bone marrow/stem cell transplant starts tomorrow, a difficult and challenging four weeks. The second phase consists of big doses of two chemotherapy agents, one on Monday and one on Wednesday, which will entirely kill off my existing bone marrow, and thus eliminate my body’s ability to make blood cells. On Friday, the stem cells that were harvested from my blood 10 days ago will be […]
From 7 to 10 days after a big chemo blast, blood cell counts hit what the doctors call “nadir” — their very lowest points. That happened for me 2 days ago (for my white blood cells, readings of 200, 200, 500, and 900 per uL from 7/7 to 7/10) and yesterday (for my platelets, readings of 30,000, 16,000, 9,000, and 16,000 per uL). These are expected, if scary-dangerous, readings. The […]
I thought I’d give you all a short update on my status. My brain feels like it’s at 60% capacity and the days since I started this process have started to run together, so bear with me. The short version is that the past 5 days have been very difficult for me, even though, from what I can tell, I’ve managed to avoid the worst side effects of the chemo […]
Thanks to everyone who left such sweet, kind, and supportive words in response to my post yesterday on Facebook. Some of you might be interested in hearing a little more about the specifics of the bone marrow transplant (BMT) I’ve started. The cancer I have (multiple myeloma) is a cancer that affects plasma cells. Like all blood cells, plasma cells are produced by bone marrow. The purpose of the BMT […]
Today marks a week that I’ve been off the chemotherapy drugs I’d been taking for four months, and I’m finally starting to feel more normal, almost back to my old self. I knew the chemo drugs were causing me fatigue (which is now thankfully almost completely gone), but I didn’t realize how much they were affecting my brain. As it slowly started to lift, I realized that I’d been living […]
Friday I took my camera out for the first time in awhile, and downloaded those pictures plus some others that had been in the camera for awhile. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure.