6 Months Checkup - June 7th 2011.

James & I on a family outing to see Thomas.

I had my 180 day check up at the BMT clinic at the Westwood campus.  I was able to do everything there without going up to the main KU hospital which was great. First job of the day drop off my 24hr urine bottles (yes I'm a 2 bottle man). Then down to X-ray for 40 minutes or so for a full skeletal survey. Then blood work at the Lab. By this time I was so ahead of my schedule we went to the coffee shop to kill some time and some oatmeal raisin cookies! The 'we' today is my Dad and I, he is visiting from Ireland at the moment. It was nice to show him where I've been spending my time over the last while. While we were waiting around with our coffees I got the results of the X-rays (pretty fast!) and nothing has changed since my 3 months check which is the news I was hoping for. Also blood work showed: Hemoglobin 11.4, WBC 4.3, Platelets 186 and Creatinine 1.73, all great news. The wbc is a little low but nothing to be too concerned about at the moment as all the other numbers are good. Numbers will fluctuate a little, and as long as all the numbers aren't going down it is just the natural ebb and flow of my body recuperating.
Next was the bone marrow biopsy which was fine, it's my 4th I think and in case anyone has to have one (and I hope you never do) they do not hurt that much. I had heard stories of pain and suffering on a grand scale and in all four cases this did not happen. I've had more painful dental work.
The results from the 24hr Urine and the biopsy will trickle in over the next week and I will get the official results on June 21st when I meet with a doc to discuss the full results.
One more encouraging result I got today was that in one of the blood tests my kappa light chains (cancer marker) were in the normal range for the first time which is amazing! To give you an idea of how things have changed when I was diagnosed my 'score' was 397.5, at 100 days post transplant I was 2.7 and now I'm 1.5 and to be in the 'normal' range you have to be under 1.9. So as I said amazing news and interesting that there has been an improvement from 100 to 180 days.
Generally I am feeling tired, I'm pretty sure the weather/heat has a lot to do with this. I'm still able to workout, but not as hard as I would like. But given some patience I'll get there.