Since my last post, I called one of the bone marrow transplant coordinators and told her that my insurance company was only deeming the first week of my hospital stay to be medically necessary. She suspected that someone at the hospital had not sent in the proper information requested and said she'd look into it. I let about 5 days go by before I called the insurance company, and, sure enough, everything had been taken care of and my entire stay had been approved. YAY!

I've had some good and bad days since the last post. It's been a surprise that my energy level hasn't increased as fast as I thought it would. Maybe I don't remember 2010 that well, but I thought improvement happened faster. Fred says he doesn't think so, so maybe not. It's easy to block things out that you didn't enjoy. At my followup visit on the 22nd, Dr. Yuen acknowledged that I had done well, got home faster than usual, and everything looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I still have to wear a mask, (very annoying), for a few more weeks when I'm around large groups of people. I DO get to cut back to only 1.5 Liters of water per day from 2 Liters a day! The eating issues are still present, but I try to eat something at each meal. Adding that much water to my stomach was certainly not helping, but I did my best to comply. Apparently, dehydration can be a big issue. I have to wait several more weeks before I can wear contact lenses, but CAN drive to Braman this weekend, to see Mom and my brothers! No flying until the first part of July. No yard work this summer (darn) and no messing with flowerbeds. It looks like pots of flowers will have to be the way to go this summer.

Today I saw Dr. Reitz, my oncologist, for the first time since the transplant. He repeated pretty much what Dr. Yuen at OU Bone Marrow Group said: I was doing about as well as could possibly be expected. It will just take some time to get over the eating issues and regain my energy/strength. I probably won't start maintenance Revlimid (a chemo drug) until at least the first part of July. It's still too early to know if I'm in remission. Dr. Reitz will probably do the blood work to determine that in about a month. It turns out that there is more involved in determining remission than just the m-spike (which was undetectable in mid April). I'm planning on being in complete remissions but will just have to wait for confirmation. I AM BLESSED!