Down Doobie Doobie Down Down Comma Comma....

I don't really know whether I am addressing my blog to myself, or if I should be saying "Hey" to all of the people(it seems there are alot) that are keeping track of every word or disgusting picture that I put on my site. Don't worry, I won't post hemerroid pictures...That would be just, unbelievably disgusting!!

So, the week of chemo went better than I expected it to go. Yeah I puked the second night, and felt nauseous on a few occasions(even now a tiny bit), it was nothing like before, that first week in November was definitely was worse. But of course this is only the beginning of the phase, my counts are starting to drop. Only yesterday, my white blood count was 1.4, today they are at .6 - significant droppage... In any means, those rises and falls are commons with Cancer, on a happy note it means the chemo is doing its job: killing the bad cells, cause the good ones are going down too. The big test,however, will come when I am jabbed in the backside again for a lumbar puncture. This will tell the doctors whether my Leukemia has gone into remission, I am really sure that it will have by then, but it will be a few weeks before I can even be tested, the chemo will still work for a while.

Although, going into remission will be good news, it means the next step...Bone Marrow Transplant. Now this operation is going to be harsh! Technically it is not an operation, simply, it is a blood transfusion, run over maybe a half an hour to an hour. No big deal right? Wrong! Very serious situation. At the point of receiving the marrow, I will have no immunity, or at least very little(my marrow will already be killed off, and my body will be producing next to nothing for any kind of blood or antigen.) Even though I am no longer producing blood, the remaining blood cells will try to attack the foreign substance entering me. I will be heavily drugged with immuno-suppressants, applied to help ease the affects of my body rejecting the new marrow. GVHD, or Graft Vs. Host Disease is very common with this procedure. Many side effects can occur, but of course there are always drugs to suppress the side effects of the disease. Once the process begins, it is likely that three months will pass before I am well enough to really do anything, or even leave the hospital, if all goes well that is(there are so many bad possiblilties because this had not been perfected yet.) It takes a while for the the marrow to fuse inside my bones, and start to produce the donors blood, another fact that is really strange, I will be producing new blood, possibly a whole new type, and definitley the person's DNA.

So I will be finding more out about this wnderful BMT on Wednesday when I meet the nurses and doctors who perform these... risky things. I don't want to worry everyone, but nothing is ever for certain in this life, and that is something we need to be prepared for.

Wish you a long and healthy life, cause some of us aren't so lucky, but I am not saying that I am one of them. I am still one of the luckiest people in the world!!