Half time today

I made it into the office today for the morning period. I did find out that they deactivate your badge after some period so I couldn’t actually get into the building at first. Anyway I spent the morning catching up with my staff, other managers, PMs, and QA testers. You end up explaining the bone marrow transplant stories a lot, but everyone was obviously pleased I was back.

So I put on a tie today and it actually felt good. Downside is Molly picked up a fever so after one day I find I’m not allowed to hold her again. Saturday is getting closer when I get to cut the last stich out. I’t the last foreign thing in my body and it will be nice to remove. Actually, my Mom, the nurse, will probably end up cutting out the last stich, more experience.

So a few last questions for the doctor that are dogging me a bit. One, how unusual was my speedy recovery since many of the nurses were surprised. Two, long term what it the percentage chance I”m cured, not so much the ‘really good’ or ‘pretty good’ responses I’ve gotten. Somehow from my physics background at Georgia Tech I just can’t quite quantify ‘really good’ into a percentage.

I got to hug Molly today finally!

Well today the catheter came out. Turned out to be pretty minor other than the surgeon getting pretty annoyed they had the wrong size scapel, an 11 instead of a size 10. It took the nurse 10 minutes to get the new one and the doctor just stood there fuming.

Anyway the great news is after my doctor’s appointment this afternoon I’ve been released from all restrictions. I’m 90% of normal and I can hug Molly (which I’ve already done), go out to the movies, and even go into work. The kitties come home tomorrow which I’m sure they miss. Of course there’s still a few lingering things and Micki has to get through the BAR, but that’s pretty normal amount of activity for us.

I’ll have to do this formally so many times over, but thanks to everyone again out there for all the help over the cancer ordeal. And I promise as much as I can, I will never do this again.

Oh, and the blog may return more to it’s java/software focus over the next few weeks, but I’ll post occassionally still about the leftover cancer stuff, like PET scans and maybe even a little local radiation.

Nurses state ‘fastest recovery ever’

More good news today. After my last catheter flush, the two senior nurses declared that I was the fastest bone marrow transplant they had ever seen and that it usually takes months to recover. Most people get to keep the port a lot longer before they’re comfortable pulling it out. So considering they do about 20-30 transplants a year there that puts me in maybe the top 1% of BMT patients. Good news is so much more fun than cancer relapses.

The picture is courtesy of Nancy from the extended Gibbscrew family. As she says she couldn’t resist.

Many of you out there probably never saw my wonderful catheter, and certainly not the 90% of it that stays under the skin. It’s been my unfortunate pal since mid-November. Anyway it’s coming out finally on Monday morning. That will leave me almost completely normal and almost done with treatment. Apparently they don’t even have to put me under to pull it out. And my skin which has been bandaged around it will finally get to breathe. You can get some pretty cool blisters having your skin bandaged up like that so long. The picture is from a medical supply company, so 90% of that stays under your skin.

As many well know the old internet of my college days and before was based upon mass sharing and everyone assumed for the best. I still pretty much adhere to that formula, but I’ve had to turn off my comments on this blog because of spammers. In fact I had to dig through some PHP to turn off all entry points to comments. Some Russian spammers kept adding random comments which were just links to gambling sites. Too bad really, but better than allowing it. At one point I had over 3000+ comments.

On the cancer front today was a good day. I haven’t even had a nap yet, I went for a 50 minute walk after two straight days of missing it, and I talked to a very old dear friend from 6th grade of all places who’s doing well and glad to here I’m well on the way to being completely mended. For those who pay attention my WBC as of yesterday was 2.1, my hemoglobin is 10.0, and my platelets are 82. So it’s all still outside the normal range, but the doctor said to go ahead and schedule to get my port out. Boy, I won’t miss that thing, and back to normal showers.