Chemo Round #1 Completed

I'm happy to be able to report that Ray has successfully completed his 1st round of chemo without any problems! He did NOT suffer any of the usual bad side effects. No nauseousness - yeah! His only complaint is that his stomach is very sore from all the injections. (21 shots over the past 7 days) but that's minor in the scope of things.

So as I sit here composing this blog update I realize that we had been worrying needlessly over what "MIGHT" happen. I've told myself to not do that, but it's very hard when you hear & read so much negative things related to MDS.

Last week the donor test kits were mailed to Ray's three siblings to discover if any of them are a match for his upcoming stem cell transplant. I'm thinking we should know within the next two weeks. We've been told that statistics show that there is a 25% chance of a sibling being a match. And that if none of them are, there's always the world wide Donor Registry to pull from & the chance of a match there is 75%. BUT a sibling is a much better choice because it reduces your chance of your body possibly rejecting the donated stem cells. 

Interestingly we learned that our children are NOT donor candidates because statistics show that the chances of them being a match are very low because only 1/2 of their DNA belongs to their father. We were told that the only time they would even consider testing a patients child is if it was a case of two brothers marrying two sisters, in which case they would share DNA on both sides. That makes sense.


The weather here is fantastic. Unseasonably warm. Did I say 'warm'? Try HOT. I finally broke down & flipped on the air conditioning today, despite Ray's dads objections. His idea of perfect room temperature is 80 degrees but with the humidity here, it was becoming unbearable for me & Ray.  I set the temp to 78 degrees to at least allow it to run & control the humidity. I'm sorry but if Dad needs to sit in here with his jacket on, then that's what he'll have to do. I can only take off so many clothes!

Anyhow, Ray gets a breather for 3 weeks before his 2nd round of chemo starts. He'll continue to go once per week for blood work to monitor things but that's fine. Unless something changes, I probably won't be updating this blog until then.