DOT +49...Dr. Chao appointment

There is some good news and bad news.  Good news...I am typing this from my parents beach house!  Bad news, Dr. Chao says to do another transplant after a few weeks off to let me recover some from the first one.  He wants to do one last "hail mary" with another graft test a week from Monday.  Yesterday, they took me off all my immunosuppressants so he wants to make sure the graft will not come in.  He told us the chances were tiny for the results to come back positive but that time will be good to build back some strength. That test should take 7 days, so the 26th we should find out the results. 

We thought he was going to say do another transplant, but we thought it was going to be next week.  While the break will be great, we are kind of in a "zone" and getting back to life and then going back to Durham will be hard.  Plus, this pushes the end date into June.  I can go back to most everything except large crowds.  So you can imagine that I got some seafood tonight while Laura and I went OUT to dinner. 

Dr. Chao really did not know why the first one did not work.  He suggested that my bone marrow might not have been suppressed enough the first time, so the donor cells could not make a "home".  The next transplant he wants the same 5 days of chemo with the addition of light radiation to suppress me more.  With the addition of the radiation and it being my second transplant, he says my chances of a graft are higher this time.

So we headed east to the beach.  We are going to stay here through the weekend and then head back to gboro until the next transplant.  He said I could go back to work some. 

So the beat goes on and we start over if the results do not show promise.  We are going to keep the apartment and try not to get too settled in gboro since we know we will be headed back to Durham and getting back on the old routine. 

Thanks for all the love and support.   It means the world and helps us get through this!