Day 28: My Valentine's Day Card!

Inwardly, I'm running swift laps around the 11th floor, waving my "It's All Good" flag.

Outwardly, I'm a little too tired for that. I settled for sitting up with a Sprite, blogging.

I got up at 2 am because I needed to go to the bathroom. Sleepily, at the side of the bed, getting my energy back from the walk to the bathroom, I decided to see if my blood counts are back for today.

The login process on my phone is slow. I don't type very quickly on an iPhone. I made sure to get it right the first time. Then I enlarged the page so that I could see the link "Clinical Record" well enough to push it.

I clicked the link with my finger, and the page of numbers that are too small to read came right up. I enlarged them, looking mainly for the first one, the date. It was 2/14/2012. My counts were back already.

Right next to it was the other number I wanted: 0.4. My White Blood Cell Count had doubled.

I quickly noted that my red blood cells were down and that my platelets were in single digits, so I'd be getting platelets today, then I started thrusting my weary fists into the air, screaming halleluyahs as silently as I could. No sense waking my wife.

I turned the phone off, and sat in silence, enjoying the happiness of a real climb in white blood cells. Suddenly it dawned on me that 0.4 WBC is a count of 400. That's high enough for them to have taken a neutrophil count as well. I turned the phone on, went back to the web page, and sure enough, there was an ANC (Absolute Neutrophil Count): 240.

That's the favorite number for the docs to watch.

A day like today means that we can pretty much count on some sort of daily upward progress on all future days.

Last night I told my wife, "I'm not going to feel like this forever, right?"

She said, "No." Then she kissed me on the cheek and said, "In fact, I don't think you're going to feel like this very long at all."

Well, my stomach's still all messed up, but here comes the cavalry to help bail me out!

That is, assuming that it's not the cavalry actually causing the stomach problems through Graft vs. Host disease, but we're watching for that, and we still have more ways to tackle that if it proves to be true.

Either way, I'm so excited!

You know, yesterday I got to help plan my son's wedding. It was so pleasant I cried. I talked to my eldest son about his college plans. He's found a plan that might work, and I had some encouraging news along those lines.

I've had good reason to count my many blessings these past few days. I've just had to force it due to an overwhelming set of the blah's. Today, it's rising right out of me.

Of course, the nurse is taking advantage and giving my platelets early. That means I just took Benadryl and Tylenol as pre-meds. Give the Benadryl a half hour or so, and I won't be aware of the platelets, and they'll be shaking me awake to get my vital signs.

I'm one step closer to seeing a lot of you!