Update

Good Afternoon All:

I'm writing from Hopkins today. I'm here as an outpatient and today is one of the few times where I am happy to be here instead of at home. My last appointment was Tuesday as the snow was starting to fall and the weather reports were sounding pretty grim. My blood counts then showed I was closing in on the need for a blood transfusion but hadn't crossed the threshold yet. So, they sent me home without a transfusion on Tuesday and we beat the weather.

However, by this AM I was pretty wiped out. When I need a transfusion I get winded just having a phone conversation or going up/down stairs. This morning I needed to sit down a while after taking a shower!

I came into the outpatient clinic pretty much announcing that they would be giving me blood and on my say so started the process of ordering a pint of A-positive for me. I'm receiving that pint now and will get another and probably a bag of platelets too. It'll be a long day but I suspect that I'll feel quite a bit different when I go to bed tonight than I did when I woke up--and that's a good thing.

These counts dropping are normal not any cause for alarm. I suspect that my white blood cells should be plummeting soon as well. Once this happens and I recover we'll be on the way to round 7!

--Russ.