Praise the Lord - Clean Scans!!!

We are back from New York with all things good! It has been 9 months since my stem cell transplant and my scans show NO ACTIVITY. The wonderful word they used a lot in the report was "unremarkable". Wow how I love to be unremarkable these days!

As Dr. Moskowitz pointed out, my remission this time is already longer than it was after my first treatments in 2005. This scan and the 15 month scan I will have in August are the most critical. If I can get past both of those, my odds for achieving a complete cure look really good. One down, one to go!

They also did a pulmonary function test to make sure my lungs were not damaged from the treatment. My lungs did great and I am still full of hot air! And my bloodwork looks ok, too. My white blood cell count is still a little low at 2.7 instead of somewhere between 4 and 11, but it may get up there again one day.

We seem to experience weather extremes when travelling to New York. My last visit brought subway-stopping thunderstorms and the first New York City tornado in several decades. This time we had temperatures in the teens with wind chills below zero. Not the greatest sight-seeing weather. But Brant and I made the most of our free day between the scans and dr. appointment. We went to the World Trade Center site, then spent an hour on the Staten Island Ferry (with heated, indoor space) which gave us some nice views of the Manhattan skyline, Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. We were even brave enough to do the top of the Empire State Building in the frigid temps. The view was awesome and there wasn't any wait on this type of day!! Do we look cold?



The trip home was a little scary since it had snowed most of the afternoon and switched over to freezing rain as we were waiting for our flight that was delayed about three hours. They de-iced the plane and coated it just before pushing off from the gate. Then as we sat on the runway, the pilot (yes, the guy with the little wings) appears in the exit row where we were seated with a little mag lite flashlight. He leans across us saying "excuse me, I just need to look out your window and check the wings to see if there is any new ice." He looks a long time, checks the other wing, then comes back to our side to check again. Boy, were we praying as we took off down the runway!

Ok, I will try not to wait so long before my next post. Thank you for all of the prayers and good thoughts as we were preparing for this big trip to New York. I was very nervous and felt every ache and pain in my body and would ask myself "is this cancer? is that cancer?".....it was just a tad nervewracking. Brant is always much more confident than me and I love to have his strength to support me.

It is nice to have a few more months now of knowing things are going well. I wish I was stronger and could keep this disease from mentally controlling me so much.....but I am who I am and I just try my best to stay thankful for each new day. Here's to a lot more new days!