Ok, I apologize for not posting in months. I could give you a ton of excuses, but in truth, it's mostly because I've had my mind on things other than my health. Not to say that I'm not keeping healthy, I've just got other things going on and have become more interested in those things than writing about health matters. I think spending so many months obsessed about cancer that I went through a backlash. Also when I stopped blogging I was trying very hard to get back to "normal", which is a whole other blog! Anyway, what you're really wondering is how I'm doing. And the answer is very good, thank you. My results from the 100 day workup were all favorable, they found no leukemic cells and everything is going just dandy. Since then, I have been tapering off my anti-rejection/immune suppression drugs which is great. That drug was really hammering my kidney, for which I had to have IV fluids. But now, I'm on low enough doses that my kidneys are recovered and I'm actually expecting to get my line out soon. Boy will that really make me feel normal!
More recent health news is that they believe that I have chronic graft vs host (GVH), which is good and bad. It's good, since that is a strong indicator that I've also got graft vs leukemia, so my new immune system is taking care of whatever pesky leftover leukemic cells remain. The bad news is that I have the annoyance of dealing with however this GVH decides to manifest itself. There are 3 outcomes: 1) the GVH gets bad enough that they have to put me back on immune suppression and possibly systemic steroids 2) we treat the GVH topically and it goes away, and 3) we treat it topically, it goes away, and it comes back, goes away and comes back, possibly for years to come. I'm going to pick option #2. So far, the GVH is inside my cheeks, they are a bit swollen, though I'm not sure enough to be noticeable, and they feel like I've been chewing on them. I've got a steroidal mouth wash that tastes like cherry Robitussin which I use 3 times a day.
Oh, and the last bit is that a received tetanus and hepatitis B immunizations during my last visit. That was a surprise, I'll take it as a good sign!
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2 comments:
You received immunizations! Lucky indeed! I'm at a year and a half post transplant and I don't know when I'll get mine because I'm still on the prednisone.
My blood work looked fabulous today so I'm sure I'll be off them soon.
When my line was pulled I started feeling better almost immediately.
Nice to hear its mostly good and you're getting on to the good stuff in life. Melissa was telling me tonight that once the radiation/surgery stuff was resolving itself for her, she sat down and wrote out a list of stuff she wanted to do in her life. Ten years on she has checked all the boxes but one: getting married, which is on the way soon. We were joking that we needed to write another list... Not that you need to write a list or anything, but it must feel good to move on. Cheers!
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