Still getting platelets, but less often

Things have been going farily well recently. I'm down to every other day clinic visits and weekends off. Spending less time at the clinic, and more time on normal stuff. As a whole, blood counts are returning. My bone marrow showed hypocellularity of 80%, meaning I have the cell production of about a 20 year old right now. (rule of thumb 100% - age is typical cellularity). So there's no issue with the production, but my platelets are barely recovering. I held in the low 40s earlier in the week until today when I dropped to 34.  Our guess is that my spleen is sequestering and destroying them, gobbling them up instead of letting them float freely.  This is annoying and has brought some discussion to the potential of removing my spleen, or a splenectomy. This will be a question for I will explore further with GI next week. I will approach a splenectomy cautiously because it is a major surgery with serious complication risks and long-term issues. But it could also free me of this platelet issue, and might be a prerequisite if I decided to go to transplant. The advice I got from Dr. Maloney was to go to the right surgeon with a strong track record.

Today I met with Dr. Merav Bar, a transplant specialist here at the Hutch. Briana came with to accompany me and ask some questions too. It was a really good meeting and I learned some more about 2nd transplant risks. Unlike some doctors who will present the facts, but give no opinions, she was happy to share her opinion on my situation. Her closing advice was to "enjoy life." Which is true for anyone, but more tangilble for someone like me who is dealing with a terminal illness. It was a good reminder, and honestly, I have been trying to do that to the best of my ability lately. Knowing that remisison is fleeting, but I'm in it right now, has given me a "enjoy it while you can" Hopefully I can enjoy it for a long time, but that is out of my control. For everyone else not dealing with a serious disease, you should really be living it up.

We had a super fun Halloween with Alpen. I dropped him off at day care sans costume and I was really hoping to see some other waddlers in costume, but alas no luck. I don't blame anyone, a suit costume would be waaaay to hot in that 75 degree room, and any costume regardless of temperature issues, would risk dirt and food stains. Best to keep those costumes ready for the main event later. That's what we did, and we kept Alpen and his lederhosen at home. Alpen was a Bavarian boy, with authentic lederhosen and socks brought back from switzerland by Briana's family in the 1980s. Briana wore it for halloween (and probably some other occasions) when she was a waddler.  I'm hoping to get our money's worth out of the thing while it still fits and have it be a Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years outfit.  So get ready for it.

At Biz pt

With his peps friends on the 30th

end of night halloween with Miles