Day +25 at home

It seems odd to open this blog edition with a photo of the area at Rush where I spent almost 3 weeks of my life. I'm told this was fairly typical time period for a stem cell transplant patient, but in retrospect it does seem somewhat shorter than that.

One bit of news that several of you have asked about is the mustache. Thankfully it has survived in spite of the loss of other hair. So the mustache remains a trademark dating from January of 1966.

Anyway, I'm home now was greeted by the spring bees that Eileen's daughters Katie and Kellie sent.

I was a bit frightened of being back here at home without the protection of the hospital. Although I really have only been here alone for two days, Wednesday and Friday. But it is wonderful to be back home.

On Thursday we were back at Rush which really is indicative of the next phase of this process. Until day 60 I will continue to be semi-isolation with fairly close monitoring (twice a week) by the transplant staff.


One of the significant things of day 60 is when the medical staff will decide if we should do a second  transplant. I have to wonder even if they were to recommend one whether I would be willing to go through this again.

I do find that I am somewhat weaker than I would like. However considering what I've been through I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's going to be at least day 100 before I get back to something close to
normal. It does get frustrating as there are some things I would like to do that I simply don't have the energy for, nor should I risk the exposure to germs from other customers at neighborhood stores.

I'll let you know how things progress next week. We do have another appointment at Rush on Monday. We'll see how well my blood numbers look relative to progress back to normal.

Thank you for all your thoughts and wishes through this process. It has helped me to know that indeed I have lots of friends out there.