day -14!

Wow! are we at day minus 14!?
Spoke with Margie this morning. She sounded very good as always. She was in for her I.V. drip.
Todays menu includes:
meeting with a social services care giver
neurologist
dermatologist
and then back to the I.V. pole this evening.

Since Margie is seeing a dermatologist today, I'll use this as an opportunity to plug skin health:
We are a moley people. 2 years ago Margie had a malignant melanoma taken off of her face and shortly afterward, I finally got
around to going to a dermatologist and low and behold: a mole on my shoulder was biopsied and determined to be malignant.

The moral of this story: (several actually)
Don't depend on your general practitioner to spot potential problem skin stuff. My mole was out there for all the world to see and no General Practitioner EVER said anything about it, but the dermatologist saw it within 2 seconds and said "that comes off today".
Don't cook in the sun. Boy, if I knew then what I know now. I did it all and regret it. The sun is not my skins friend
and now I am paying the price. I'm moley like Margie and all you Szabo's out there need to see a dermatologist.

p.s. Neutrogena makes a fabulous spf 55 that goes on very light, not sticky and is fantastic. Best price going is Costco.
So, that's all I'm going to say about that.

I digress...

A couple of bits and bobs about leukemia and bone marrow transplants:
(stuff comes up when I talk to people and so I think it may be important to mention them here)

-Blood is a major organ like any other of our major organs. Lungs, heart, liver etc. So the fact that Margie is having a bone marrow transplant is like any other organ transplant and thus, will be monitored closely for rejection. Organ transplant patients are put on anti rejection medication to further encourage the organ to live happily ever after in the recipients body.
Most organ transplant patients have to stay on anti rejection meds all of their lives and the meds themselves can be very harsh. The good news is, for a bone marrow transplant patient, most of the time the patient is tapered off of the drugs and then eventually does not have to take them, sometimes within five years. Very encouraging.

I've written about DAY 0. (zero) That's the day of the transplant and in transplant speak, the first 100 days post transplant is the most critical time period. This is when Margie will be at her lowest immune tolerance, the organ can be rejected, she's at the highest risk for side effects and graft vs. host disease. The average transplant patient takes 20 medications every day.

After she get through the first 100 days, the next critical time period is the first year post transplant. An excellent analogy that she told me yesterday was to think of the first year, post transplant as like a newborn babies immune system. Makes sense.

That's it for now, off to do my other job of raising kids and running my business...
p.s. Dash, Susie and Eddie: thanks for the props on the blog. I enjoy it and I enjoy making sure everyone is as up to date as possible on mom. I wish I were there, but I can't be so I figure that everyone has their individual "role" or job.
So, this'll be mine. Plus, mom and dad are really enjoying it and reading their biographies. Wouldn't we all.
Love, Kathleen