Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Hello to two new friends

Still sick here -- inconvenient but not the end of the world.

I received an wonderful email last night, passed on by my wife from my wonderful sister-in-law Gail.  A friend of Gail's, with whom I spoke at some point during my treatment (I can't recall -- chemo brain?), evidently determined at some point to go to Arkansas for treatment.  I thought I remembered from our conversation that this person wasn't necessarily going that route, but in any case, he evidently did.

Turns out this person was sharing a transplant room with another person, who was also familiar with my blog, and as a result of reading it had also determined to go to Arkansas.  Let me say hello to them both now, if reading: GB and PD, I'm so glad to hear you took your treatment by the horns and are taking the fight to your MM.  I wish you every success in your treatment and hope to meet you in LR (or elsewhere!) one of these days.

Without belaboring the point, I was sent a very touching note that credited me with saving PD's life.  This is obviously not the case: BB is saving PD's life.  But I'm extremely thankful for any minor role this blog may have played in helping PD make his treatment decision.  Both PD and GB encouraged me to ensure this blog is published, and I am resolved to do so, and have taken steps but it's just so hard to find the time to finish the job!   I will do so, though.

So PD and GB, keep up the fight, and thank you very much for your kind words!

As for me, I've still got the tail end of this chest cold but it's tolerable.  My platelets fell to 65 last week, which was troubling.  I took my last Revlimid last night, and we'll see what the platelets are today.  It could have been an aberrant reading (but I doubt this as I've got several ugly bruises).  In any case, we'll see what they are today.  That was a fairly sudden drop -- they've held pretty closely between 100 and 120 this whole time and I'm not sure what the sudden fall would be due to.   Whites remained at 2.8 -- despite the fact that I had a pretty bad cold when it was last checked -- and HGB around 12.7 still.  Everything more or less where we want it to be, especially M protein under immunofixation which remains non-existent.