Today I am 100 days out from transplant. It's a milestone, even if a somewhat arbitrary one. If you make it to roughly Day 100, survival rates are more favorable. Your body is somewhat stronger, and should you develop gvhd (graft vs. host disease), you will be in better shape (perhaps) to ward off some of its more devastating effects.
The next step will be to start weaning myself from the immune suppressants I take to prevent or minimize full-blown war within my body. Actually, a little gvhd is seen as a good thing as it indicates that the donor cells are at least skirmishing with the rest of me, including any residual leukemia.
When I had my first transplant, I knitted myself a sweater with decidedly mixed results. It looks like a pretty nice sweater, but it has an odd fit I didn't see coming. Last week, I decided to take up some knitting projects that wouldn't be as challenging as a sweater, but would still be fun and useful. I'll be knitting a lot of scarves in the weeks to come. I'll be mixing up the patterns and colors so it should be amusing. It's also good physical therapy for my continued weakness in my right arm and hand that developed when they stretched my rotator cuff while implanting my catheter. Maybe I'll graduate to hats and mittens/gloves when the scarving becomes tedious.
mb: Thanks for your well wishes on my previous post.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Congratulations on 100 days, and happy knitting.
Congratulations on 100 days, celebrate your milestone. I love reading your story, gives me hope that I will get there too, I am only on day 4 as of today.
Congrats on the 100 days, PJ! And I love the idea of the book. I admire you for having the energy even to think about something like that. The world would be richer - even richer - if you decided to go through with it. I would read you! And I'm sure plenty more people would.
Keep it up! Can we have a snapshot of some of thoses scarves once they're finished?
Best wishes from sunny Berlin, Brenda
Congrats pj :) Sam xxx
Post a Comment