Wednesday

All is well at our house. Elisabeth is still in Chicago so its been quiet, she has been having a fun time with her cousins. Penny and I went to Iowa City today for my appointment it was pretty uneventful, my blood counts seem to be where the Doctors think they should be at this point. Next week will be a much bigger appointment as they will be doing DNA testing in order to find out how much of my new immune system is changed over from mine to Nathans. I will also be having Pulmanary function testing as they need to see if my lungs have been damaged at all by the chemotherapy. They did a base line on me before my transplant now they need to see if anything changed. Then in the afternoon I will have a bone marrow biopsy the purpose of that is to see if they were successful in killing off the Cancer Cells. That would be something to pray for. The test should show how many if any of the Philadelphia Chromosomes I still have, those are the mutated cells that caused the Leukemia in the first place. It would be expected that there will be very few (again if any) and that my new immune system will in time kill off whats left. These test will take up to two weeks to get the results. So it seems everything is moving along as planned. A few concerns are my Liver and Kidney function are on the low end right now and my Platlets have fallen a bit. Again though most of this is brought on by all the medicine and will probably just need some time to straighten out. We felt like the Doctors feel very good about my progress at this point so left feeling good about the visit. I have been continuing to exercise as much as able (walking on the treadmill, and riding the exercise bike between naps )and the Doctors are very happy with that. On another note Nathan and Cory have signed up to compete in the Iowa Games this year in the swimming competition. The Iowa Games are really fun I competed in them in Hockey for years, Nathan and Cory were both very good High School swimmers but Cory has been out 10 years and Nathan twelve so they will be working very hard to get ready. Cory will be competing in the 19-29 year old group and Nathan in the 30-39 year old group. Our grandson Gavin is also competing and Elisabeth is contemplating doing it also, it will be a really fun weekend. I will not be able to attend yet still no crowds but someone will video tape it for me.