Bad Hair Day

Gretchen and me with Mohawk

Jeff pointed out that it was auspicious for me to get my stem cells on the first day of Spring, the season of rebirth and renewal.  Happy Spring, everyone!  I hope you are all enjoying the wonderful weather that I can't.  Grumble, grumble.

Well, the inevitable finally started to happen.  This morning, I noticed my hair starting to fall out, so I took the plunge and had my nurse, Kristina, shave it off.  Yuck. At first, I told her to give me a Mohawk, just to see how it looked.  As you can see, the result is not very impressive.

 I finally told Kristina to take it all off (my hair that is).  Fortunately, I had Gretchen bring in one of my hats to cover my now-shiny dome.  However, here is how I look completely shorn. My only consolation is that I know it will grow back sometime fairly soon (a few months at most).  Sigh!

Other than that, I'm still doing fine.  I had a slight bout of nausea today, but it went away in a few minutes.  I'm still on anti-nausea drugs, which have been working really well.

They have posted a chart in my room so I can track my numbers daily.  The important ones are my White Blood Cell (WBC) count, my hematocrit, and my platelets.  My WBC is at 2.5 and has already started to plummet, which is expected.  It will go down to almost zero before the stem cells engraft.  My hematocrit is already a little low (28) because of my anemia.  If it drops below 24, I will need to get a blood transfusion.  The platelets will take the longest to drop (about a week I think).  It's now at about 308, and If that number drops below 10, I will need a platelet transfusion.  This is all normal and expected.

Now I just have to wait for my stem cells to take over and rebuild my immune system from scratch, hopefully without any trace of the MM.