Salad, honey and grapefruit !

(the title is very significant to me. See later in the blog why)

I got many emails asking me “what’s up?” Time flies. I realized that two more months flew by since my last update. Things are getting even better and I am happy to tell you all about it.

As usual, medical update first and other stories later.

Typically after a stem cell transplant, the recovery is slow. This is why the doctors prepare you for the worst and hope for the best. In my last update I reported that the IV feeding tubes were pulled out and I started to eat and drink very slowly. The process wasn’t easy. Getting the stomach to function again after 2.5 months of rest, was painful. Going fast forward to present day, I eat like a pig three meals a day and many times in between. Recovering my lost 13 Kg is slow but I am half way through. With Shoshi’s cooking it is an enjoyable task. Yet, I had all sort of restrictions: no fresh vegetables (for possible bacteria), no fresh fruits (with a few exceptions), no grapefruit (interacts with some medications), no honey, no sushi, no eating outside of home, etc. Nevertheless, after 2.5 months I could eat on my own and that was great.

Last week I went to my check-up (two months after the last one). The numbers are very good and I am practically healthy and clean. It was quiet amazing to see the long lab report with 99% normal parameters. In the past, there was hardly anything normal. Every line was either High or Low with many High-High and Low-Low. It was a pretty wild scene. I keep some old reports and when you put the old and new side by side, a picture is worth 1000 words!

By the way, remember the Igg chart? I started at 12,000 – twice outside of the scale. Here is the updated one. I am now below the minimum…

My hair grows nicely and its black. My vision is much improved and I hardly need my glasses while driving. Go figure out... My doctor gave me a nice surprise: she relieved me of almost all the restrictions! Because of my good situation, I can now eat everything, do everything, go everywhere. And so from last week I eat salad (lots of it with olive oil) and soon I’ll be back to my habit of a breakfast with grapefruit and a toast with honey. After 5 months of no salad, the taste of it was divine. As usual, when you have something for granted, you don’t really appreciate it. My stomach is behaving much better, though not yet completely fixed. My energy level is getting better. I go to work every day. Shoshi is still shocked and from time to time she asks me “are you REALLY going to work?”. I go upstairs and don’t use the elevator and from Dec. I will slowly start my business travels. Yet, I have no vaccinations until June 2010 and I have to be away from very crowded places, sick people etc. The current flu epidemic is some concern. I do take all kind of protective medications, wash my hands and I’ll put a mask anywhere its needed (like planes).

What’s next?

From next month I’ll start to take very low dosage chemotherapy pills for maintenance, hopefully with no side effects. This is needed to suppress any possibility of re-occurrence. I read somewhere: once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient. It is always in the back of my mind and now I can understand this statement. The statistics are not really available from the relatively new treatment that I got. All that is remained for now is be happy and not to worry! I already broke the statistics so many times…

So, on this happy note, I can tell you a bit what’s up in our family life.
To make it short, I’ll do it in bullets:

· Inbal & Pierre are settling in Uganda. Thanks for SMS, email and Skype, we keep in touch. I can’t wait to see her when she comes for s visit in Feb. 2010. It was sad to say goodbye to Pierre and Inbal who were part of my life and support team for the past year and a half. Yet I am happy for them and look forward for their wedding in 2010.

· With Inbal and Pierre’s departure, Shoshi and I are empty nesters. Luckily we have Shadow the cat.
· Neta just complete a visit to Israel and is back in Spain until mid-Dec. She likes it a lot in Spain. Then, after two weeks in Boston, Neta will fly to Colombia on behalf of World-Teach to be a teacher for a year. Take a look at http://www.worldteach.org/

· Lior is in college and is 18 years old TODAY! · In 2010 we’ll have a lot of travel to visit all the scattered family…

· In early Oct. my long time childhood friend Avramico, came from Venezuela to be with me for a week. We had lots of fun which you can see in the pictures: naval museum with real battleship, submarine and more, World War II re-enactment, flying in an open cockpit Stearman over the beautiful foliage in Massachusetts (yes I flew again).

· My mom visited us for a few days. We took the time for some nice walks, eat a lot of almonds and talk.

· In late Aug. Shoshi went for a visit to Israel. Thank you Ori for the grand tour in Jerusalem! As soon as she came back in early Sep., Inbal and Pierre departed for Uganda, handing me over to Shoshi!

· In Sep. we had the annual MMRF walk, sponsored by Orbotech and raising money for Multiple Myeloma research. This time I walked the 5 Km as a healthy person. Thank you all for your contributions.

This is it.

The rest you can see in the pictures. Returning to normal healthy life is easy. I look back and have many reflections on the last two years. There were many scary and happy moments. This could be a topic for another update. Many of you have asked me if this will the last chapter in my blog, now that I am healthy.

I hope that I will not have to report on any medical news and continue to use this tool for family updates. Since my updates will not be as frequent as in the past, you are welcome to contact me any time. I will continue to forward to you Inbal’s blog from Uganda http://inbala.blogspot.com/ and soon Neta’s blog from Colombia. For now you can see her blog from Spain http://netaalon.blogspot.com/
All the best, be happy, optimistic and healthy!

Yours

Guy