April 8, 2009 10:10 PM 50 days to go

How about that! As the song goes, I'm "halfway to paradise". However, paradise doesn't measure up to what most of us would consider it to be. I asked the doctor what the changes would be after the 100 days are over and he said that they were dietary only. So, ordering out, fresh fruits and vegetables, etc. will once again be on the menu. But, no restaraunts, shopping malls, church, Red Sox games, etc. will be allowed. Crowds will still be verboten. As the doctor said, it is "only" 10 more months.

The other change after the 100 days is that my trips to Dana-Farber will cease to be weekly and will then become monthly. At that point, I plan to have my Hickman catheter removed so that I will then have to be stabbed each time that I go to the clinic and have my blood drawn.

As expected, my counts were once again "on the money". Everything is going great! I even lost about 2 pounds of totally unneeded fat. This puts me down about about 15 pounds from I started this whole process. Not bad, when I am eating and drinking everything that I want - minus the food restrictions and alcohol.

About a month from now they will be doing another chimera test to see how things have changed from the first one that was taken 3 weeks ago. After that, they plan to start weaning me off the immunosuppressants looking for a little bit of graft to host disease.

The best part of the day was the fact that we got to the clinic just before 7:00 this morning and everything went like clockwork so that we finished seeing the doctor about 7:45. We got back home at 9:00. Never have we been able to pull this one off before. Hopefully it augurs well for the remaining early appointments that we have.

So, it has been a good day on many fronts.

But that 10 months looms as quite a challenge...

Bob