Two posts in one day! You don't know you're born!
 
HA!  Two of my last four posts have been about the blog, admin stuff, rather than about my progress through the recovery stages of my marrow transplant.
 
That's good - it suggests to me that I am actually 'getting past leukaemia'  as the page title says.  Hooray!  (or Hurrah! or even Huzzah! if you're feeling antiquarian).   
 
Its is still "getting past" though, I'm not there yet.  As I mentioned a week or two ago:
"...the reason I was in last week was that I have a rash around my belly and back.  Could be heat rash, could be mild GVHD. Though GVHD is usually on face, neck, palms, soles, arms - almost anywhere other than the trunk - so we're not sure." 
That was during my trip to hospital on the 15th. The doctor added a small dose of steroids to my daily drug regimen and we let those work for a couple of weeks.  On my follow up visit last Thursday (May 29th) I saw a different doctor. This one took the rash (!) step of assuming I have some interest in the treatment I'm receiving and volunteered some information!
 
He looked at some blood chemistry results from when the rash first appeared 2 - 3 weeks ago and noted some slight abnormality in my liver function from around the same time.  The organs most commonly affected by GVHD are the the liver, skin, and gut - so this is confirmation that the rash is mild GVHD rather than heat rash, or soap allergy or whatever. 
 
This is good - mild GVHD means that the new white cells will be zapping any of my old ones that might still be lurking about - thus eliminating (we hope) the chance of the leukaemia returning (again).  It's also bad - if I'm getting GVHD now there's a chance that it will hang around for the long term - though whether that means for a few months or permanently we can't say yet.
 
He doubled the steroid dose that I'm taking to 20mg daily - though as he pointed out it's still a tiny dose - less than what they prescribe to asthma patients. 
 
In fact he was talking out loud as he decided what to do - he could have upped the dose of one of the immunosuppressants that I'm taking; "But we're hoping to have stopped that one completely by the time you're a year post-transplant so increasing the dose now would be a backward step. And the steroids are much faster acting..."   More information - a target date for stopping one of my drugs!    I shall make a point of asking the powers that be (ie the nurses) to make sure I keep seeing this Dr. Patients-are-people-too! in future rather than my usual Dr Need-to-know-you-don't!
 
So here I am. Externally I'm well - thin, fit looking, mostly smiling, beard coming back, scalp not so visible not so shiny....
 
Internally - my guts and digestion are pretty much normal. My blood is getting there: Red cell counts are almost back to normal, platelets are normal, white cell counts rising happily. My Neutrophil counts are still a little low and more variable than we'd like - but not a cause for worry yet. 
 
This news about the liver function concerns me a little - but the doctor didn't seem to think it was a big deal so I'm not worrying unduly.  And of course I didn't bother to ask whether I'm allowed my celebratory glass of wine.....