Day Plus Two-Hundred-Ten

This is Day Plus Two Hundred and Ten and Jody has some fantastic information she would like me to share with everyone. As I mentioned earlier we had a clinic visit with our transplant doctor, Doctor Brunvand on Tuesday this week. We were anxious to find out the results of our Chimerism Lab report. The report showed Jody has fully en graphed with her donors stem cells her T-cells are developing and are over 95-96% her donors. This test is plus or minus 5% so it is as close as you can get to 100%. Her granulocytes, which include Neutrophil, Eosinophil, Basophil granulocytes are at 100% her donor and continue to grow. In addition to this news her CBC came back better than before we began the transplant. Jody's HCT continues to improve along with her hemoglobin. She is back to totally normal with her White Blood cells and platelets. We are both ecstatic!

Today, Jody had a tooth pulled and she did fantastic. It seems one of the side-effects of chemo is it causes Jody to loose layers of enamel on her teeth. Cavities can form quickly. Jody went to her dentist for a check-up and he only found one cavity. It was in one of her rear molars, partially below her gum line and did not have a matching tooth below it. The dentist felt he would have a tough time drilling and filling the decay. He felt it was best to just remove it since it did not serve any function. After consulting with the BMT team on Tuesday everyone felt the risk was low enough to proceed with the extraction. Jody had her appointment today and everything went well. Well almost, she did protest a lot before the tooth was removed, but afterwards she told me it was nothing. Ask her to tell you about the tooth, she wanted to bring it home but the dentist would not allow it, something about a major bio-hazard.

Jody and I wanted to share some pictures with you. The picture below was the two of us at our Valentine's dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants... Notice the margaritas? Trudy and Derek know exactly where it is...



Valentine's dinner... Notice the Necklace! It was her birthday present... I told her she is wearing my heart around her neck.

I wanted to show everyone the progress she has made in growing her hair and I just could not make a choice as to which picture to use, so I used the following three pictures. I hope everyone enjoys them.  

Picture number 1 "Smiling"

I was given strict instructions... No turkey gobble neck this time... I think I succeeded, isn't she pretty? 

Picture number 2 "Chin-up"

Check out all the curly hair... It is known as "Chemo-Curl", she is not sure if she wants to keep it... but she has it for now. The doctors and nurses tell Jody sometimes it last only for a year and sometimes it stays longer. Jody is just happy she has some hair for now. 


Picture number 3 "Looking-up"