Up and At 'em

Dave has been feeling pretty good lately - his hematocrit is up to 41% this week! (That's a measure of the red blood cells - he's been low in red blood cells for at least a year, sometimes dangerously low.)

Dave had his bone marrow biopsy on Tuesday. The doc told us at that time, that based on his labwork alone, things looked good and she expected that the bone marrow biopsy would show the cancer cells in his marrow to be down to 10%. In which case, he could wait another two months before seeing her again. Today she called with the results from the biopsy. The cancer cells in Dave's bone marrow (which were 80% when he was diagnosed) are down to "less than 5%" now.

So the new plan is for Dave to get an infusion of Rituxan every two months, starting February 20th. Now, if only the DVT in his left leg would clear up, we could maybe go a week or more without visiting the hospital.

Knee Takes Front Stage

Well, we didn't make it to the end of January before we had to make more trips to the hospital. Actually we didn't make it out of December. Right after Christmas, Dave was coming down the stairs and heard/felt a "pop" in his left knee. He had ruptured a Baker's Cyst, and his leg started swelling up. It didn't get better, and the symptoms are almost the same as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), so we got nervous and ended up spending New Year's eve at the hospital. They ruled out DVT and sent him home again, saying it would soon resolve on its own.

It didn't - it got worse. His leg got bigger, redder, and more painful, and today they did an ultrasound and diagnosed a DVT. So now he's on Warfarin (pills) and Fondaparinux (injections) and he's being followed by the "Blood Thinning Clinic." And he's pretty scared. I had a minor surgical procedure myself today, and I'm just putting one foot in front of the other.

Onward, into 2008.

(The Bone Marrow Biopsy is still scheduled for January 29th.)