Day +3,652

The ten year anniversary seems like a good time to update my blog, especially since my last post was at my five year anniversary. I’m delighted to report that my health is as good as it’s been since the transplant. I rarely even get colds anymore. The biggest hiccough I’ve experienced health-wise is that in May of 2011, I wound up with a blood infection (bacteremia) that landed me in a hospital for something like twelve days or maybe more. It was serious; so serious that my BMT doctor said I was sicker from the bacteremia than I was from the transplant and subsequent GvHD. It affected my heart (caused some vegetation on one of the valves), my knees (I could barely walk), and my left shoulder (I couldn’t lift it). I wound up with a C5 corpectomy, meaning I had surgery to replace 2 of my vertebrae with a titanium cage due to a growth there caused by the infection. This resulted in the need for months of physical therapy to get the use of my left arm back. I also had an episode of atrial fibrillation turning into a heart flutter one morning while I was still in intensive care. The infectious disease docs never were able to figure out how the bacteria got into my bloodstream. They worked hard at it and were able to eliminate several possibilities, but not nail down the source. Apparently, it was tangentially related to my compromised immune system in that one of the vaccinations I received as part of my recovery from the transplant was found to be insufficient and has since been replaced. I can’t recall now the name of the old or the new vaccine. I have since recovered from that and am playing full court basketball once a week, tennis several times a week when the weather permits, disc golf once a week or so, and quite a bit of bicycling. I feel so grateful that I have recovered from all my health issues enough to stay as active as I am. What gets in my way most is my advancing age that reduces my strength, speed, and reaction time. Oh well, as the Rolling Stones said, “what a drag it is getting old”.

Also in the plus column is that in the last five years (last three actually), I have gained a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, and two incredibly wonderful granddaughters. Being a grandparent really is the best job in the world and I am in awe of how much those girls make me love them.

I don’t recall that making it to ten years post transplant was ever really a goal of mine because the goals were always much closer in than that. Early on, it was getting past the latest infection, getting off meds, getting back to work, getting back to activity, etc. Ten years just happened after getting past the other things. I do wonder occasionally how many years the trauma of replacing an immune system takes off the life of a body. But I don’t spend long on that, though, because it doesn’t really matter and  I can’t do anything about it. I’m just grateful to still be hanging around.