I've been away from DU for a week or so
Had a rough couple weeks but things seem to have settled down at this point. I had high dose chemotherapy on the 16th to wipe out any remaining multiple myeloma cells in preparation for or stem cell extraction. Everything went great for a week, then on the 23rd I spiked a fever and ended up in the hospital for five days.
I was neutropenic, which basically means my white blood cells crashed. Normal white blood cell levels are around 10 and mine eventually fell to .1 before recovering. The big danger with neutropenia is infection because you don't have a means to fight off bacteria, so I was kept isolated in the hospital and given more antibiotics than I ever want to see again until my blood count had recovered.
Recover they did, I was released on Memorial Day, and yesterday we did the stem cell extraction. Normally they hope to harvest around 5 million stem cells. We were able to harvest 17 million. They called me an over-achiever. So now it's to the point where we simply sit back and monitor the myeloma cells to see when a transplant might be needed. Hopefully it will be years down the road.
The staff at Duke/Raleigh Hospital took wonderful care of me during my first ever hospital stay. I think they may have actually understood my sense of humor. They deserve medals just for putting up with me for five days.
I'm taking a day or two off and will return to work on Friday for a very light workload. Then it's back to normal on Monday.
You guys did an awesome job in my absence. I wake up this morning to find that Michele Bachman is retiring and I read an awesome article yesterday about the fading power of the NRA. Now I see that GMO corn has been pulled from most of Europe as economically unfeasible. Keep up the great work, guys. Maybe we can eventually see some of the change we've been waiting for.
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Always love hearing good news.
I've Stage IV Breast Cancer, and am doing well, considering. I'll never be cured, but I'm kicking ass!
Hearing your story is inspiring. 
You likely lift everyone around you, including yourself.
Thanks for checking in.
(BTW, we must be neighbors. Please let me know if I can help in any way.)
