No more restrictions!

I can eat what I want to. Go where I want to (including church, crowded places, and airplane travel). And I can basically resume life as normal (with the exception of having to drag oxygen everywhere until my lungs more fully recover).

Yahoo! Just in time for the holidays.

So now that I can attend Sunday School and Relief Society, it's Christmas Day and we're not having those. Oh well. Just one more week to wait.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

My oncologist said something recently that made me stop and ponder.

I mentioned that I'm discouraged with how long it's taking to recover from the transplant. I'm still fatigued and needing oxygen 24/7.

She said she wasn't surprised at all. "After all, your body has a memory of what it's been through so it's healing from all three occurrences of cancer this time."

Wow! So my body this time is having to heal from chemo when I was 7 and 8 (MOPP and CCNU) and radiation, from chemo 4 years ago (ADV), and from chemo (ICE), radiation, and the tranplant with high-dose chemo (BCNU, Melphalan, Ara-C, and Etoposide).

Whew! No wonder I'm so tired!

100-day follow up is FINALLY scheduled for next Tuesday, the 20th, and I have only the following questions to ask, all under the category of "When can I. . .":

* Eat grapes and sushi?
* Stop leaving the room whenever vacuuming or dusting are being done and do them myself?
* Have plants and flowers in our house and work with soil?
* Swim and sit in a hot tub?
* Share hand towels with my husband?
* Stop having to wash bedding every week and towels every two days?
* Fly on a plane?
* Try food samples at places such as Costco?
* Eat soft-serve ice cream?
* Stop needing to wear a HEPA mask whenever I'm in a hospital or doctor's office?
* Shake hands?
* Sit in a room filled with people (attend Sunday School and Relief Society or eat in restaurants)?
* Pet our dog without having to wash my hands immediately afterward?
* Stop taking Acyclovir (anti-viral) and Dapson (to prevent pneumonia)?
* Start taking Crestor? Do I need to start taking it?

In addition,
* What can I do to increase my red blood cell count? Is a low level contributing to needing oxygen 24/7?
* What were the results of the PET, chest x-ray, and blood tests?

Whew! That's all.

Today I heard the summary results of the PET scan from yesterday.

Rachel from the bone marrow transplant team read over the phone, "No evidence of Hodgkins lymphoma recurrence."

Hooray! More to cheer about.

It's been a long time! There hasn't been much to report though--just tired of lugging oxygen tanks or cords with me everywhere I go and feeling rather tired and weak. It's pretty common for me to sleep in every morning until about 10 a.m., and I'm pretty content to just sit and be a couch potato. This is not who I'm used to being. I hope it gets better.

My appetite has fully returned. Now it doesn't seem like any smells or thoughts of any foods turn my stomach any longer. I just have to be careful to increase my activity so that I can keep getting healthier and stronger and keep losing weight.

$135.776.31. Want to know what LDS Hospital charges for three weeks of inpatient treatment for a bone marrow transplant? $135.776.31 and that doesn't cover all of the specialists in a hospital that bill separately. That's just the hospital's portion. And our portion? $0.00. Hooray for insurance and for meeting out-of-pocket maximums earlier in the year!

My 100th day since transplant was yesterday. It's a big milestone that the doctors track, so I'll be meeting with them on the 19th of December. Hopefully, I'll get to stop taking antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal medication then. More things to look forward to :-)