Day +277. Hi there. It’s been a while. Idk if you remember me, but I’m the guy who randomly got severe aplastic anemia two years ago and received a bone marrow and stem cell transplant last year. Yeah, that guy. I realize it’s been a hot minute since I’ve last written, but that’s because I’ve been trying to live life as normally as I can. My body has been stable, counts are stable, we’ve officially stopped the immunosuppressive regimen (Cyclosporine if you recall) and will be stopping some other drugs in two weeks, we’ve been continuing phlebotomy every two weeks taking 1 unit of blood to lower my iron overload (from all the blood units I received last year), and I’ve been trying to get myself back into to shape!… Okay, maybe I haven’t been doing that last one very well. Either way, things seem like they’re on track!

Rewind to two weeks ago: I woke up with a scratchy throat which persisted for two days, and on the third day the scratchy throat was gone but I had full blown sinus congestion for two weeks. I was taking Sudafed religiously hoping it would pass, and never once did I have a fever. Until yesterday. Sometime in the afternoon, I was shivering and burning up, spiking a fever at 102.5! So, I did what any good transplant patient would do and called the clinic to see what I should do. I was advised to go to the ER.

Thanks to my lovely roommates Danika & Chris, I was able to get to the ER in less than 10 minutes. After being shacked up for 6 hours, during which time they drew labs, gave me some meds, collected a few samples, and took a chest X-ray, I was admitted to UCSF Parnassus for a bacterial pneumonia. Yep, that’s right. I caught pneumonia (sooo less exciting than catching Pokemon). The X-ray showed a bit of cloudiness on my lower left lung. How this happened, I’m not quite sure. I think after getting my second round of immunizations two weeks ago, my body was weakened from recovering from the shots and a little bug crawled right in!

Anyway, I’ve been doing alright so far. The biggest pain has been trying to alleviate the body aches I get whenever I spike a fever. I’m on a doxycycline and zosyn (piperacillin & tazobactam) antibiotic regimen while taking tylenol for fever control and oxycodone for body aches. I’ll hopefully be able to go home tomorrow, but it all depends on how I fare tonight. I’ll keep you guys posted!

Meet Brenda! Adam & Steve’s cousin. She’s much less rambunctious and needy than her relatives.