Things here continue to move along nicely. Here are a few more milestones from the past week.
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- Yesterday I got the last scheduled treatment at the hospital! From now on, if all goes well, it will be only blood tests.
- The results of these continue to be very good. For example, my hemoglobin level went above 10 for the first time since the beginning of this illness (there was a blip during one of the early treatments when this happened, and soon fell again, but mostly I was hovering between 7-8). I have no idea where above 10 this level will stabilize (normal for adult males is between 13 and 16), but being very anemic for so long I can feel and appreciate this increase in the ability of my blood to carry oxygen (e.g. my heart rate is going appropriately down, which affects any physical activity).
- Another piece of good news came from the pathology report of my bone marrow biopsy 2 weeks ago. Recall I explained the notion of chimerism – basically what fraction of white blood cells which are mine, and what fraction are the donor’s. So, in my bone marrow, a 100% are donor’s cells – there I am not a chimera at all. In my peripheral blood I am almost there: all my B-cells are the donor’s but my T-cells are only 85% donor’s. In short, the donor cells practically took over.
- I continue to get stronger. Now besides long walks, on days when it is too cold to go out I climb up and down the stairs of our building, doing 30 or 40 stories a day (not continuously, but in groups of 10).
- Last and maybe least, but explains the picture above. I was finally allowed to replace the disgusting yellow goo in the picture (some kind of antibiotics) by a pill!
All these mean that the frequency of hospital visits for tests will go down, initially to once a week. Moreover, my doctor said that I’ll probably be allowed to go home much earlier than planned, possibly as soon as mid-January!
Finally, the family converged in NY again. Yuval and Vivian arrived from California, Einat, Sahar, Tamar and Nuri from Tel Aviv. A week of fun begins!!
