Sue Charen

Six Month Checkup

It has been six months since the bone marrow transplant. As part of the check up today, Sue had a bone marrow biopsy and some blood tests. Her now biweekly regular blood tests came back fairly good. And for the first time in awhile Sue did not need any red blood. And it meant we did not need to stay for very long.

Sue has been staying inside mainly and resting a bit the last couple of weeks. It has been pretty quiet hear during the holidays. We hope that everyone has a Happy New Year.

Petty Torments

Sue has been having lots of minor ailments: tiredness, acne, dizziness, achy, ear pain among others. Some of them are probably due to being off the high steroid treatment (sorry, no affiliation with the Mitchell report). But according to her doctor, at this stage in the post transplant/ post GVHD phase, petty torments are par for the course. It will probably be a few more months of this, before a semblance of being normal will take hold--"look forward to the summer," the doctor said.

On the positive and more important side, all in all Sue is doing well. Although she needed red blood this trip to the hospital, the trend toward her ability to make her own seems to be good. Sue just needs to avoid colds/flus/infections, get plenty of rest, and take her medicine.

Happy Hanukah

Hanukah is harder to spell in English than most of the prescription medicines Sue takes. So happy Channuka, Chanukah, Hanuka, and ever other version of it ....

So here is the update. Sue is off the steroids completely. She had a test to make sure her body can produce her own and it was successful. But since going back on Gleevec and the stopping of steroids, Sue has had nausea. It has not been too bad, but she is taking more meds to help. Also, Sue is much more tired, but this should improve as her body gets used to not having steroids. Sue's eyes are a little dry, but not significantly enough to require more than regular drops.

Sue is now going every other week to the hospital and getting a nurse to come to the house to change her dressing (Sue still has a permanent line to allow for infusions). Sue is still not producing red blood normally yet, so we may be on this schedule for awhile (but her platelets and white blood are doing great). We are doing our best to avoid colds and flus.

Happy holidays!