Thursday, July 10, 2008

10 Months, Still Kickin

Boston was like a giant baked bean yesterday, hot and sticky. Fortunately, we had an early clinic appointment and were back home having lunch by 1:00 pm. There's nothing much to report, as my blood work continues to be summa cum laude. One bit of "news" is that my doctor eliminated a drug from my regimen, leaving me with just 2 prescriptions per day. That's probably about average for a 54-year old American, and those should be phased out by September. A chimerism test was ordered to see what's up with my cords. The last time we checked, Colorado Boy was dominating Aussie Boy by a 3 to 1 margin. Even my blood is a metaphor for American hegemony.

My immune system has added some new defensive moves, scoring a 247 on the CD4 count. Normal is 500-1500 so I'm still fragile, but you could probably drop me now and I won't shatter. I might get a crack or two. Don't worry, I'm still assiduously avoiding confrontation, especially with snotty toddlers.

A word on uniquity. That's not a word, but I think it sounds better than uniqueness. It would appear that I am the lone cord blood transplantee living in the State of Rhode Island. This came out in a conversation I had the other day with a policy analyst for the RI House of Representatives. We were chatting about the cord blood initiative the RI Blood Center's trying to get off the ground, bouncing around ideas about how to make the case compelling in the eyes of the public and the powers that be. Normally, I'd love to be unique in some way, but I would not have chosen this specialty. It chose me, so I'm going to try to find some use for it.

Shout out to Ann and Chris!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have been following your blog since I find myself in a similar position. My husband will be going in for pretransplant testing on July 21. They are suggesting a triple cord transplant. Any comments?

PJ said...

I believe I commented about this on the LLS Boards. The standard used to be a single cord. I think the jump to try 2 was more significant than the decision to go with 3. Good luck to your husband.

Anonymous said...

Your blog is witty, enlightening, sad at times, but always inspiring. Thank you for taking the time out to talk to me. It was truly an honor.
Cheers,
Adriana Thomas