A Promising New Year!

January 1, 2008

The year of 2007 has finally ended and I wanted to offer some the highlights that finally brought this year to a close. I'll call this the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good:
The blood drive that took place in December had over sixty three people signed up with forty eight pints collected with thirty of these being first time donors. I hear this is some kind of first time record which makes me feel really good because the blood is so important to the successful recovery of Leukemia patients. This is a picture of me next to the blood mobile where I got the chance to meet a lot of the people and say thank you.

I ended the year feeling pretty good and have started walking up to one half mile a day on the new treadmill. It's super cool with a two speaker system that you can plug your I-Pod into and pass the time listening to music. I plan on using this as much as I can to keep my muscle tone and build my strength for the transplant.

The Bad:
As you might have heard I was suppose to be in Seattle at SCCA as of December 26th but have been put on hold due to a RSV virus that is making a lot of people sick. We will have to wait another few weeks while this gets out of the clinic. The Chemo in December really sucked and made me sick enough that it was hard to eat. They called this part of the treatment consolidation but after this week will be putting me on the maintenance part of the treatment that should be easier to handle until the transplant starts. We are hoping to start at SCCA by mid January but are still waiting to hear on how things are up there so we don't have worry so much about getting sick .

The Ugly:
I'll break the ugly into two trips to the hospital since the start of Christmas break. The first one had to do with the last round of Chemo that made me sick enough that I had to stay for four nights to get past the headaches and start to eat. The second trip was just last Saturday morning, 2 am, when I passed another small kidney stone that really hurt. I once again found myself on the 6th floor at Mary Bridge and stayed Saturday night but came home Sunday. We brought the nurses a 20 pound tin of mini Hershey's chocolate bars that mad a lot of them smile, by the time I left on Sunday more that half the tin was already gone!

I'll finish this e-mail by saying that I'm feeling really good now and want to continue to get exercise, do my studies and look forward to getting notes and e-mails from all of you. It kind of sucks being stuck in the house 24/7 but I need to stay healthy for the transplant that I hope will happen soon.

Matthew Yantzer