Sat, 22 Nov 2003

1st Haircut

Hey there! It's Saturday morning and Jade had his weekly check-up at the BMT clinic yesterday. He had his blood tests done which all came back normal. His magnesium was up a little bit this week but we still have to stay on the magnesium infusions at night. All his other blood and chemistry levels were within normal/acceptable ranges.

The skin biopsy results for graft vs host (GVH) disease came back negative which we were thinking might happen. The day he was tested he didn't have the pinkish tint to his skin as much as he had previously. The "hole" in his arm is healing but it does look like a cigarette burn on his forearm. It's still rather impressive.

Next Friday, 28 November, will be Day 84 which is a big deal. It's the three month anniversary post-transplant. They will do a complete disease assessment on Jade. The day after Thanksgiving we'll be in at the hospital bright and early. He will have another chymerism (Jared vs Jade percentage) test, CT scan (look for any visible tumors - which there have been none showing up since they "debulked" the tumors on 17 March), chest x-ray, pulmonary function test, physical exam and another test for graft vs host (GVH) disease. This time the GVH test will be done on the tears in his eye. They take a strip of paper and touch your eye to get it wet and then analyze it to see if any GVH shows up.

Jade seems to be feeling well the past week. He still works from the office in the basement a few hours every day and is able to still spend time playing with Garrett and with me. His energy still comes and goes but he's doing pretty good. Jade's hair has been growing and he finally went for his 1st post-chemo haircut on Wednesday. The barber said he had quite a few split ends and took it a little shorter to cut them out. It was starting to get long on Jade's ear and I've been teasing him if we didn't get it cut we'd need to start "feathering it" like Farrah Fawcett in the early 80's. Jade has been trimming his beard and I've been shaving his neck every week, but this was the first official haircut to trim and shape it and it was a cool thing! Jade's barber is a great guy too - 78 year old veteran who is as nice as the day is long. He was just mad Jade didn't bring Garrett with him! (That'll be next month!)

Without being overly ooshy-gooshy and sappy sweet, we want you to know how grateful we are for all our blessings this Thanksgiving. Jade and I have talked quite a bit the past week or so how lucky we are! Jade is doing good and it's nice to know he'll be here and not in the hospital for Thanksgiving. The local news showed a story yesterday about a family where the dad and son both have cancer. (The early-30s husband has Ewings sarcoma and the cute,little boy, age 3 1/2, has another type of cancer.) The mother/wife drops her husband off at the U of U and then goes with her son to Primary Children's for his chemo the same week every month. I can't imagine Jade and Garrett both having cancer right now. We truly have so much to be thankful for! What Jade and I have experienced this year is nothing short of miraculous. Thank you for all your love, support, friendship, faith, prayers, encouragement and hope. We have needed and used all of it!

We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Gobble Gobble! We'll keep you posted and from the bottom of our hearts - Thank You.

Love and Gratitude......................Tanya and co.