Update from Rajesh!

It was great to see you all in person, when you have friends like you all I don’t need a new year date to celebrate, anyway thanks for all the great support you all have been providing to me and my family, definitely I shall fight my best and expect to come out of it victorious.

I have finished my 1st round of the battle and my health has reached almost normalcy. My counts have all come up unaided ( that is without the growth factor injections) which shows that my bone marrow is doing well as of now. My HB is about 8.7, WBC is 4700 and Platelets are 38K ( may be considered a bit low) but for patients like me it is ok.

This means that I have earned a break from this round. So in all likelihood I would be discharged from the hospital today and would proceed to Palakkad to Padma’s dad’s residence for a 10 day break just to recuperate my body and come prepared for the next round. That is a relief and a good sign. I can get some time with the kids whom I get to see every day but can’t hug or huddle until I am out of here. So I am looking forward to this break in earnest.

As regards to near future programs, my High resolution HLA of mapping my Blood samples have been sent to AIIMS Delhi by CMC Vellore and they would be getting the report which would then be forwarded to NMDP for the HI RES Mapping with the current list of matches ( Obviously would include the donors from you drives).

From the Doctors here, these process may take a couple of weeks so may be close a month too, that does not permit me to take a large break because I am in remission now and I have to make sure that my disease is also well under control. That is why I would be back here on 16th and based on my Bone Marrow test on my return, I may have to go through another set of Chemo and be ready to receive the Donors Marrow.

If all goes as planned then, in all likelihood I would have this transplant done soon and then like my 1st battle await for my recovery back to normalcy. The tricky part here is that some times the reactions of the new donor’s marrow and my existing marrow would be a bit complicated. Anyway we shall hope for the best and assume these would be minimal for me.

regards

Rajesh