I have not posted anything for a long time, because there
was very little to say. No more unusual
treatments, no more things that if they weren’t happening to me I would guess
to be impossible. Yes, I was taking 11
pills a day, and yes I had to do some exercises to strengthen my core to
compensate for a curved back. But
nothing unusual.
Well, one of the mundane effects of having a stem cell
transplant is that you have a completely new immune system. Your white blood cells go to zero before the
stem cells begin to replace them, and the net effect is that you lose all your
acquired immunities. Apparently when
your white blood cells figure out how to defeat a particular bug, enough of
them remember that bug so that the next time the bug appears, the white blood
cells can respond to it faster than it can proliferate within your body, so it
never gets a chance to make you sick.
Well, all that white blood cell memory is wiped out. You get to reestablish your immunity one bug
at a time. They also have to give you
all the inoculations you had as a child, as all those externally induced
immunities are gone as well. They don’t
give you even the inoculations given to newborns until 1 year out, as your
system has to build up a certain base of operations first. And then there are some inoculations like
polio that they don’t give you until the second anniversary because there is
the chance of dire effects before that time.
Well I sailed through the spring and summer without getting
sick. Here I was coming up on 11 months
from the stem cell transplant in September, thinking the continued statements
by my oncologist about a compromised immune system were words I didn’t have to
worry about. Then in October I got a
cold, an ordinary, mundane cold. We had
a trip planned to California to see Yosemite with my youngest brother and
attend (actually run) a Friends of Nigeria biennial meeting. Well, I still had the cold through the trip,
and I was surviving on cough syrup and cough drops. The visit to Yosemite was killed by the
government shutdown, but we got our deposit back, and the northern California
coast was a wonderful replacement.
The
cold just wouldn’t go away, or what did go away was quickly replaced by the
next one.
It was serious enough that I spent November 4th –
8th in the hospital. I got
progressively sick over the prior weekend, and I spent a lot of time in
bed. Sunday I just couldn’t get warm, in
spite of having an electric blanket on high.
Monday I reported my symptoms to my oncologist, and he said I should
come into the clinic. He decided to
admit me to the hospital. 23 hours of
sleeping for the first 2 days plus intravenous antibiotics pulled me out of the
slump, and put me back on my feet. They
took lots of tests, none of which told them exactly what I had. By then end of the week they let me go, in spite
not having nailed down the ailment.
Apparently most viruses are not distinguishable by the array of tests
available to the doctors.
Things went relatively smoothly for the next couple of
weeks, culminating in a very nice concert by Sounds of Stow with Barbie
conducting. Unfortunately, our
grand-niece died on the same day as the concert, which derailed the post-concert
party and led to a major family crisis.
I continued to have a low-level cold, but other things were more
important.
Sue Englund, Jess’s mother, normally provides 2 days of
daycare per week for Tyler and Emma, Jess & Andrew’s children. Tom & Sue had a 3-week trip to Europe
scheduled for some time, so Barbie & I filled in as much as we could in
Vermont during the first 3 weeks of December.
Sometimes we were together, sometimes I was on my own, as Barbie is
still teaching 4 days a week. Unfortunately,
Emma (the 11-month-old) was continually sick.
Runny nose, cough, whatever. Tyler
was generally healthy, but he had a bout of diarrhea. The net result was that every time we went to
Vermont, I came back with a deeper cold.
I saw Dr Levine on 12/19, and he said I needed to break the cycle of
reinfection. He said it would probably
be impossible over the holidays, but I should really aim to do that once they
were over. Well, I never made it past
the holidays.
We spent Friday & Saturday (the 2 days after I saw Dr
Levine) in Vermont, doing the daycare thing.
The kids had lots of cold symptoms, but lots of energy too, so whatever
they had wasn’t getting them down. Well,
it certainly got me down. We returned to
Stow for a Saturday night Christmas party, and I had to blow the whistle early,
as I ran out of gas. The cold raged for
the next few days, and on Christmas day in Jamaica Plain (our son Brian’s
house) I took a nap during the middle of the day, sleeping longer than our
grandchild, Brendan. Well further
exposure to Brendan was not good either, as Thursday things were decidedly
worse. By Friday Barbie insisted on
contacting our GP and I went for a chest x-ray and blood tests. The GP examined me, and sent me to the
Emergency Room. The ER contacted the
people at Beth Israel, and they shipped me into BI that night.
Saturday was actually the date for the Jones family
Christmas in Stow. They went ahead in my
absence, and I am told it is a good thing I wasn’t there, as there were several
sources of infection at the event in addition to the grandchildren. I spent most of the day sleeping or going for
a CAT scan of my chest. Nurses &
doctors coming into my room would wear hazmat suits to protect themselves from
my germs. I did have a facetime session
with the people in Stow, but I had little energy to worry about what I was
missing. Sunday I was still in the grip
of whatever I had. Another CAT scan,
this time of my head to examine my nose and sinus areas. By Monday they had a diagnosis: pneumonia and
sinusitis. I started to feel better, and
have some energy. Monday night there was
a dramatic improvement in my symptoms.
My nose cleared up, and I was able to get through the night with relatively
little coughing. Tuesday they decided I
was well enough to go home.
Well, not actually go home, as Barbie had a wicked cold by
this time as well. So I have spent the
last 2 days at the Zettlers, good friends who are both well themselves. They are capable
of fending off anything I may have brought into their house, and they have a nice guest bed with its own bathroom.
I spent just enough time at home to get the necessaries for my staying
here.
So I am now better, and will soon be home. I have been warned that I must avoid continued
exposure to sources of infection. That
means I should avoid contact with grandchildren until the spring. That means I will not attend their joint
birthday party this coming Sunday. That
means I will be unavailable for babysitting of any kind until the cold/flu
season is over. That means I will wear a
mask and gloves in any situation where I have to share space with someone who
has cold symptoms. That means I will
wash my hands at much more frequent intervals than normal. That means I will wear a mask and gloves to
attend the theater.
Here I thought I had gotten over the hump by almost making
it to the first anniversary of my stem cell transplant without getting
sick. Then I got a series of very
ordinary colds that repeatedly laid me low.
The disease continues to shape my life, just this time by the mundane
event of colds that carry much more of a knockout punch for me than they do for
normal people. Presumably my immune
system will continue to pick up new immunities, but meanwhile I need to not
overstress it. Dr Levine explains this
as if it is not rocket science, and a 2nd grader should be able to
understand the concept. But it took 2
sessions in the hospital to get it through my thick skull. I really don’t want a 3rd session
in there.
So all of you who are out and about in the world and staying
well should say a special thank-you to the white blood cells that are fending
off infection for you. They do an
amazing job, and one we all take for granted.
