Day +70: Finally, Something to Report

Yes, it's Sam again.

You've all admonished me in person or by email for not posting here myself, but the truth is that not much has been happening the last several weeks, and when not much is happening, Alissa is better than I am at telling the story so she kept beating me to it.

It's been the same slow recovery here; I'm not exactly getting better day-by-day, but maybe week-by-week. I'm 2/3rds of the way to the magical Day 100, and I'm definitely feeling better now than I did, say, in early May. But I'm still no champ yet. While things are good when I'm up, I still get tired very easily. I go out of the house when I can, and I've even begun to drive myself places again, but still I can't get through the day without a three hour nap. My blood counts remain a bit low (mainly as a side effect of the expensive CMV drug I'm on), and I remain anemic. I've gotten a blood transfusion every couple of weeks or so, but scraped by this week without one.

But I'm writing, as the title of the post says, because there's finally some news to report: I had my first set of CT and PET scans this week since the transplant, and today I got word that they are all normal. This recovery from the transplant is such an ordeal that it's easy to forget about the lymphoma that started it all, but obviously that is always a fear, and so this scan result is excellent news. Not that I was hoping for anything else, but 70 days is the longest stretch I've had in remission this whole time. Here's hoping it lasts for good.

In other news, we had a whole bunch of family and cousins visiting this past weekend--totally full house. On Sunday, everybody participated in the Hope in Motion walk and run event here in Stamford, to benefit the Bennett Cancer Center at the Stamford Hospital. Our friends and family were out in full force, and made a strong showing both in the 5K run and the 5K walk. Here is a group shot of our running team before the race. Click on for more pictures!

That's me in the center, in the funny-looking hat that's now become my signature sun protectant! And no, I didn't walk or run. Only supervised and photographed, and sat in the shade...

Lastly, I woke up from a nap today to find an unexpected FedEx package waiting for me. Upon opening it, I was flabbergasted to discover that a group of my friends from college had conspired to get me a Nintendo Wii as a surprise present! Needless to say, this blog post was significantly delayed tonight by the opening of my little care package and a few rounds of Wii Tennis. A big thank you to all, once again. This should help greatly both with the boredom at home and also the total lack of physical activity!