A Healthy Doctor Sam

Another Anniversary

We celebrated the one year anniversary of my transplant with the last blog post, and today Alissa and I celebrate our one month wedding anniversary!

Thank you to all of you who have celebrated with us in so many ways.  

The Match

There's no young doctor out there who doesn't know about The Match, and who hasn't at some point really worried about The Match. You say "The Match" to a medical student or a resident, and they have panic-ridden thoughts about having to feed their wishes to a computer, and waiting for it to dictate their destiny.

I've been through that match a few times. Not just for the roller coaster ride that it took to get into an orthopaedic surgery residency, but then I had to repeat the process for hand surgery fellowships. In the end though the matches worked in my favor, and I got the spots that I wanted.

Now I'm up against another Match, with even bigger consequences (who would have thought there could be such a thing?)

If and when the chemo succeeds in controlling my lymphoma relapse, I need a matched donor for a bone marrow transplant to try to keep it that way. My immediate relatives have all fed their blood samples into the computer, and for the last several weeks we've been waiting for it to dictate an answer. Well, yesterday I got the final results from Dr. P, and it turns out that my brother Nariman is a perfect match!

Normy is 26 years older now, and a lot bigger.
I don't think I'm going to be carrying him on my shoulders anymore,
but I'm hoping he might have room for me on his!

For me to do well, many other things have to fall into place--but having a well matched donor, and my brother no less, is a huge piece. Normy is not typically fond of doctors or having medical procedures done, but when I called him a couple of weeks ago to tell him that it was looking like he might be a match, his immediate response was "Let's go, let's do it!"

I met Dr. P for the first time yesterday. She is very nice and extremely knowledgeable. We went over the variables in doing a marrow/stem cell transplant, and she discussed various protocols and what she would choose in my case (full marrow-ablative chemo, total body irradiation, and full stem cell transplant, for those of you wondering). We talked about the risks, which are many and not insignificant. And we talked about the slow recovery and long term complications. It was all rather scary, but it was good to hear that there was a process to go through and a possibility to deal with this.

And of course, I'm still very worried about wether or not the current chemo will succeed for its part, which is the first required step. Things are now on hold with Dr. P and the transplant team, until Dr. H gives the word that chemo has been successful and we are to move on to that next step.

4:39:25

Congratulations to Emily, and thanks to all of you who have supported her and Team In Training!

Our Marathons

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my cousin Emily, and she mentioned that I was nearly done with the CHOP portion of my chemotherapy.

"But Em," I pointed out; "I only just got my second to last dose, and then there's the actual two-week cycle, the final dose, and..."

"Sam." She interrupted--"That's not a very good example of the marathon way of thinking."

Well, she was right. And she would know!

You may have noted Emily's link on the side of this web page, but I wanted to give her efforts a moment here on center stage. For over a year now, Emily has been running with the Team in Training program, raising awareness (and money!) for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society while she trains for the New York City Marathon. Emily's goal is to raise $10,000 for the LLS this year, and with just a couple of weeks to go until the marathon, she is amazingly close!

So please take a minute and click over to her page and help Emily with this very good cause. As a bonus, you'll also get to see a picture of the two of us at last year's marathon finish line--even though I'm convinced that picture makes me look like a certain Sesame Street character...

--

When I first got going with the CHOP chemotherapy back in mid-August, it seemed like such a long road. After the first two week cycle, I wanted to feel like I had achieved some sort of accomplishment, but I couldn't help but to think that this was a six-month ordeal, and I had only accomplished two weeks of it.

And that's how we get back to the marathon mentality. Sure, the first two weeks didn't seem like anything. But then there went another two week cycle, and then another, and before I knew it, here I am--two months down, CHOP is basically finished, and I'm well on my way.

In the marathon of my lymphoma treatment, I'd say I'm at about mile 9 or 10 by now, and have sort of found my stride for the moment.

Which brings me to the part where I apologize for the lack of updates...

Things have just sort of been moving along without incident, and that's part of the reason for no updates. Though the other part of it is that "moving along" still meant I've had my good days and my bad days. The last couple of cycles, especially, had been a bit worse as far as the nausea and other symptoms. And the last couple of "nadir weekends" (the middle weekend of the cycle, when my blood counts are the lowest) were all ones in which I felt pretty crappy and had to pass in bed.

The good news is that "moving along" also means I bounced back from each of these lows, and have had a lot of good days in between. There have really been some surprisingly predictable things about the CHOP cycles, and one of those has been that without fail, I feel great the second week of the cycle.

I'm surprised how little I'm doing to pass the time. I don't really know where the days go, but they sometimes seem to pass without me doing anything at all, and still not feeling bored. I read the New York Times and the New Yorker, but I never seem to get around to reading the many books I thought I'd get a chance to read (I still haven't finished Heat, which I started over a month ago, and only have about 30 pages left, but haven't even touched in over a week.)

Stuff that I am managing to do include going to the Einstein ortho conferences most weeks, teaching my weekly class at the medical school (though I'll probably have to give that up soon), watching a lot of Food Network, and at long last joining Netflix. Let me know if you have any good movie recommendations!

Hi Mom!

You know you've made it in the web log business when your mom at last finds her way to your site!

Mom know this already, since I presently live with her, but to update the rest of my readership:

I've been having a nice quiet week here in Stamford. On Tuesday, I was at Sloan for some baseline testing (the echocardiogram and CT scans), and tomorrow I'm seeing Dr. H, at which point I'll also be having a bone marrow biopsy. I emailed Dr. H this week to tell him my concerns about the excruciating pain from the last go-around, but he assures me that at the Sloan-Kettering they do it differently (stronger Lidocaine?), and that I'll be okay.

That's all that is on the agenda for this week. Once the results of all this testing is back, hopefully next week, we will start the chemotherapy.

Yay Emily!

Yesterday, my cousin Emily and my dear friend Megan took part in the 2006 ING New York City Marathon.

Keen readers may remember that Emily was running as part of Team In Training. Thanks to contributions from people like you, she was successful in raising over $10,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

(click the picture to see the full album)

Great job, Emily and Megan, and here's to a great run in 2007!