November 16, 2009

Every day I am getting a little bit stronger and recovering.  The distance I walk has been reduced significantly by being sick, but it hasn’t stopped me.  I did not do much over the weekend.  I spent Saturday and Sunday in the clinic then relaxed at home.  I watched some football, the Iowa-Ohio State game was a real nail biter.  Texas was able to traumatize Baylor.  I also watched more How I Met Your Mother and Fipp and I started Mad Men.  I am not sure what to make of it quite yet.  We’re only 3 episodes into it.  I am still baffled at how the Redskins won and Pats lost.

Today  got some great news.  My engraftment study came back and both the white blood cell and red blood cell/platelet lines are more than 98% engrafted.  The test is not sensitive enough to say with certainty if a cell line is 100% engrafted, so 98% is the best number you can get.  The doctors say that when they see more than 98% on the lab report it is 100% in reality.  This means that my bone marrow is now all my donor’s marrow and it’s producing new cells.  It should be producing at a grater rate than it was a couple of weeks ago, so they stopped the Neupogen to see how the new marrow is producing without any sort of stimulation.  It should produce well and improve fairly quickly from here since it’s all my donor’s marrow.  I was a little worried that after the infection the transplant would fail.  But it didn’t.  This is some of the best news I’ve had since I was told there was a donor for me back in August.