Day +12. What a crazy few days this has been! From dealing with insane, whole body writhing bone pain (from the stem cells engrafting and growing in mah bones), to making sure my mom gets settled into my apartment (with the amazing help from my roommates Chris and Danika and my sister who flew out here for the weekend), I’ve had quite the eventful weekend! And now, today, I get to go home! Two weeks early!

The past four days I’ve been getting neupogen shots that have effectively acted to “awaken” the new cells that were growing in my bones. In my last post I had mentioned that my counts were on the rise, and boy did they rise! Just within three days, my absolute neutrophil count (neutrophils = the cell type that are the first line of defense against infection) went from <0.1 to 3.47 x 10^9/L today! My white blood cell count jumped from 0.1 to 5.0 x 10^9/L, and my hemoglobin and platelets haven’t significantly dropped at all (they’re usually the last two types of cells to come back in a transplant, so we should see them start rising in the next few weeks).

With these quickly growing numbers and because I live so close by in case an emergency were to happen, my care team decided that I could go home today. I’m excited! Mainly because I won’t have Steve constantly beeping at me, but primarily because I’m so ready to not have to eat hospital food anymore. Who doesn’t like their own mother’s home cooking? Amirite? Oh, and more independence. That’s nice too.

Anyway, my journey to recovery has just begun and I’m still in the very infancy stages of my new immune system, but I’m feeling good and I have enough strength to get back onto this recovery road quickly.

Oh happy day!