As communications professionals, Sam and I are always yelling at our program, science and legal staff for not properly celebrating our victories.
"State takes initial steps to protect clean water, but fails to address [x bad, related policy]," doesn't exactly instill confidence in the hard work of our advocacy team, than it would if we just took the time to celebrate our accomplishments for a whole news cycle and then move onto whatever needs to happen next LATER. All this to say... we're being hypocrites today. As an update to my concerned post from Friday, Sam's labs showed NO peripheral blasts today. This is undoubtedly GOOD NEWS. But, his white blood cell count is still dropping, and he needs transfusions for platelets and red blood cells, so it still seems as though something is awry. So we're happy, but we're nervous too. We're always nervous. But a little more so than usual. The other thing going on this week is that Sam's transplant team is convinced that his BMI needs to be higher before going into his transplant. We tried convincing them that Sam has always been a skinny guy, but apparently there are a number of studies out that show that mortality rates are higher/too high for patients under a BMI of 18.5, which Sam happens to be under. Since we're on a race against the clock before he relapses (he can't have more than ~5% blasts to be eligible for his transplant, and last time they checked a month ago he was at ~0.25%), he won't have time to gain the weight "naturally," e.g. by eating a shit ton of cheeseburgers. So, they are going to surgically place a feeding tube into his stomach this week. While it isn't a big deal medically speaking, it's a psychological blow to Sam who is understandably pretty sick of procedures and tubes and home infusions and constant reminders of his illness. Of course, there are a ton of tests each week that I don't even bother to blog about because then I'd never stop typing. So it's one more thing. BUT hopefully one more thing that gets him closer to a transplant, and a cure, and back to our home. So anyway, that's the less-than-celebratory but honest update. This week we'll hope that his dropping blood counts don't lead way to blasts anytime soon, deal with the feeding tube placement, and hope that next weekend brings more hikes through big trees with Birkie.
Jim Barnhart
1/30/2017 05:20:05 pm
If only there was such a thing as a fat donor like a bone marrow donor I could rule Comments are closed.
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