One Day At A Time..

We are plugging along still , one day at a time... I don't really think anyone really is still looking at the blog or at least it doesn't seem like anyone is so I am not sure if updating it still is even necessary. Even though it probably seems like to everyone old news.. we still are very much living day to day all of this cancer stuff. For the next few years as Eric's doctors tell us will be this on going battle and day to day worry. After a few years once you get to a certain point it gets better, your chances of rejecting or getting Graft Vs. Host decreases but is still very real and there for the rest of your life.

Eric's doctor was telling us about one of his patients whom was about 2 years out, he loved water skiing before his transplant (Eric loves it too!) so he was not feeling a ton of energy but had missed it so much. Despite being told no more sun exposure for the rest of his life, cover up, long sleeve shirts all the time, no more boating, water skiing, soaking up the sun, sunbathing....because the sun can actually activate and start Graft Vs. Host in a bone marrow transplant patient. He just wanted to go one more time, a short little water ski mission. So he went, not very long was pretty warn out just from the short distance. He ended up getting Graft Vs. Host and died at the age of 37 years old!!

Can you believe it? You do not realize how much your life changes and how many restrictions you have for the rest of your life just to stay alive. The first battle is to get through the bone marrow transplant, then it's another journey of its own just to stay alive after it. Still you are grateful, even though your old life is gone and much of what you enjoyed you are grateful to be alive, grateful for more time and a second chance. I have to wash all of Eric's clothes in this special sun block stuff that actually coats his clothes up to 20 washing with sun block protection.

Even our yucky gloomy days right now in the winter we have to take all the same precautions. Eric's hair is slowly starting to grow a little bit, he has a little bit of fuzz, Austin tells his Dad he looks like a little baby chicken on the top of his hair with a little fuzz/ hair starting to grow--Eric laughs at that! It looks like it might be coming in alot more blonder, it funny I guess we will see. The first time Eric had cancer in 2002 after his Cytoxian Chemo he had his hair grew back in a little more darker, dirty dish water blonde and the texture changed to a lose curl a little bit. So we will see what happens this time, we are all making predictions on which month we think Eric will have a full head of hair. I think by maybe June he will have a short hair style barely....

Eric's week has been a little better as far as energy goes this week. He has not felt as warn out, took a little less naps. His counts have been pretty good other than all the sudden yesterday his home health nurse faxed over to me his blood results from Thursday and he has dropped again quite a bit on his white cells to 2.6 so here we go again with 5 more days again of Nuepogen shots in his stomach each day-YUCK! He hates those but as he told me "Once you have been through all I went through on this bone marrow transplant- a shot in the stomach is a walk in the park!"

Eric's other levels are ok, holding in there... his red blood cells are 3.45 and hemoglobin 12.1 with his hematocrit 33.6 which is still critical low but a little higher this week than the last week. His Tacrolimus level is going down better like we wanted to 6.9 ( this is the one we have been so concerned about and watching -they want it around 3 to 4's) They changed his dosage to .5 mg in the AM and 1 mg in PM ( I have been telling them this for weeks- finally they listened) so it has now started to drop. His creatinine has been stable/ better at 1.5 so we have not had to the daily IV's treatments at home that take 5-6 hours - YAY!! Platletts I am happy to say went up again a little bit to 65- YESS!!! He has not been that high other than shortly before we came home from Texas in years so we are happy about that!

All in all a better week... the kids have just finished their 2nd term in school so that's nice. It is crazy to think that they have only half the year left now of school. We left to Texas for Eric's bone marrow transplant on their first day of school and we came back a few weeks before they finished their 2nd term, that is a long time! Well like always I go on and go but there is a week update for everyone-if anyone even still checks this blog anymore. We are still in the thick of it and will be for a while but grateful to the Lord for our many blessings and for Eric's donor!