Sorry for the lapse in posting again, but I hope to post more regularly as there's more going on. At a high level, I finished my 6th round of chemo, and I showed a good enough response to the treatment such that they recommended moving forward with my autologous stem cell transplant. Praise God for Google - I started my 3-month short-term medical leave this week.
Next week, I'll be getting a chest catheter placed, will have a round of chemo, and will start injecting myself with drugs to stimulate stem cell production. The injections will continue for a couple of weeks before the levels are high enough for a collection. From there, I'll have hardcore chemo (Melphalan) before they give me my collected stem cells back to rescue my immune system.
Sounds pretty simple, though I'll be immuno-compromised for much of the time, so I'll be spending most of my days at home.
Anyway, I hope to post more in the days to come. In the meantime, I'm grateful for many things:
- I have this week to enjoy my health/freedom.
- Jenn and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary this past Friday!
- My coworkers gave me a care package with dinosaur stickers, a dinosaur puzzles, and various things to do while I'm home or at various appointments at Stanford.
- Many people have offered to take me to appointments and/or stay with me since I'll need a 24/7 caretaker for much of the time. I feel very blessed.
- I got to hang out with a bunch of my high school friends and their kiddos.
- I got a note from my insurance provider saying I was paying much less for my chemo drugs than I should have been. Since it was their error though, they said they wouldn't bill me for the past six months, but that I would be paying the correct amount going forward. The nice thing is that I should hopefully be done with the oral chemo for a while, so praise God for His provision even through the clerical error!
More soon!
-b
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