Blogging Again

I am amazed and flattered that anyone ever read my blog at all, let alone now that I've been posting infrequently. Thanks for the comments and keeping up with me. I'm truly flattered.

I got a letter from my donor yesterday. It was really touching. I wrote him in November to thank him for his kindness in being a donor. It's a little strange writing a letter like that. The Bone Marrow Registry people won't let the patient nor the donor know who the other is. So all I knew was that he is a he, 39 years old and a perfect match DNA-wise. Now after getting his letter I know that he lives in Europe, has been married for 12 years and has two children, a boy and a girl. The Bone Marrow Registry people don't want you to know each other's names nor locations due to ethical, emotional, and psychological concerns. They don't want anyone to develop too much attachment until the transplant is successful. They don't want either person to feel guilt or blame if things don't work out. But after two years they will give you the other person's contact information if both agree.

They did not tell me that my donor is from Europe, but I had already deduced this along the way. His letter still did not say where he is from and several words were blanked out by the Bone Marrow Registry censors. But European sentence structure is different from English, so, although the letter was in English, I could tell that he is European from the structure of his sentences. My guess is that he is from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, or Germany. I have heard from a couple of other donors that their donor was Belgian. I can't wait to meet him. What a wonderful connection. And can you imagine matching someone's DNA who lives so far away? I am still just so amazed by it all. I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone, but it has been fascinating never the less.

So, all you folks out there, sign up for the bone marrow registry!!! It's completely painless, requiring just a mouth swab. Get your churches to include a bone marrow registry drive along with their blood drives. The Bone Marrow Registry web site is www.marrow.org. You'll find all the "how to" information there.

Medically, there's not much news. The lymph nodes are still there, so the DLI (donor lymphocyte infusion) has not worked yet. But Dr. Khouri told me that half the people who get the DLI protocol don't respond until after the third one. Although I think the nodes in my neck did get smaller and softer a couple of weeks after the second DLI, but now I can't tell. It's been three and a half weeks since the second DLI. Blood counts are improving slightly. The red counts are climbing slowly but surely. The neutrophil count is not dropping as much each week. But the overall white count is low and steady at 2.1. That could be a good thing considering that I still have enlarged lymph nodes. If the nodes went down and the white count went up, I think that would indicate that the transplanted cells are taking over in a big way. But if the white count went up and the nodes remained enlarged or got larger, that would be a bad sign that my old leukemic system was winning out. So it appears that for now that they continue to battle to a tie.

My last blood typing, before the second DLI, showed that I had my donor's blood type, A-positive, so I took that as a good sign. But Dr. Khouri didn't seem as impressed as I was about the blood type change. Dr. Khouri doesn't let out a lot of information, which ticks me off to no end. We have butted heads a couple of times already.

Well, it's time to go do something else.

Ciao (LOL - I don't know, maybe he's Italian)