Today, I received what veterans call an “early out.” I am receiving a good conduct discharge on Feb. 2, nine days early. I’ve taken a lot of drugs. I haven’t missed an infusion. I have kept to my diet. I dutifully drink 90+ fluid ounces of liquid every day. I’ve earned it. I’m really a short timer now! (I also hereby reserve the right to change tenses within a single paragraph!) Read the rest of this entry »

No, that’s not a misspelling. About a week ago the nurses noticed some discharge at the place where my central venous catheter entered my chest. I was experiencing no pain but out of caution they swabbed the area and sent a specimen to the lab. It turned out positive for a virus called pseudomonas. So they pulled out the catheter. For the past week, I have had to go to the ITA every day for an infusion of antibiotics to kill it off. My luck again, they got it early. It hadn’t entered my blood stream and disseminated. They say that if it did, it could have been life threatening. Wow! I sure wish I had a functioning immune system. As Joni Mitchell says, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” Read the rest of this entry »

It is day 73 and I am feeling pretty good. I can walk like a normal person. I can work out with light free weights. Every day, I seem to get stronger. This makes me nervous. Whenever I am feeling good, I look over my shoulder for some damn Damocles who is lurking about waiting to lop of my head. I can’t shake this feeling that something nefarious is afoot in transplant land. In this case, my mind is working out a scenario something like this: You’re feeling pretty good, you have no evidence of even mild graft versus host disease maybe that means that the transplant is not working; maybe your old, leukemia-ridden blood is winning the battle. Of course, the same logic could work equally well if I was feeling lousy. Read the rest of this entry »