Avi's Lymphoma

A week at home passed quickly, and we are getting back into the old routine. Edna is back to work (she never stopped working in NY, but now she is actually going to work). I went to IAS only one day this week, just in time to see the geese who visit every year to poop all over the Institute’s lawns. Then I realized (and this was stressed in an IAS-wide e-mail) that the flu virus is very active there (as everywhere else), quite a few people were sick and I had better stay away. Some of my group members came to visit me at home, one at a time, and sitting at safe distance. I plan to continue going, but not too often, mainly on seminar days, until it is safer. Edna and I had friends at home, went to a restaurant once, and of course visited our favorite Small World Coffee in town, which we missed dearly, a few times when it is not too crowded. The balance between avoiding infection and just living has to be maintained somehow – I hope I don’t catch anything! The medical visits natu...

Thanks to Tal and Yaeli who carried, drove, carried some more! Thanks for all the balloons, welcome home decorations, and good wishes. It's good to be home!

Another week flew by. All visitors left a week ago, and so did Edna who went for a week to Israel (as I write this she reported landing back at Newark, and will soon be back here!). I stayed at home with Yuval for the week. This quality time was spent on walks, biking, museums, movies, and long chats on everything, including math! We went a few times to restaurants, something I started gently about 2 weeks ago. Like movies we try to go to places at times that are relatively sparsely populated, although we don't always succeed. And like museums, I wear my mask, except when eating... Of course I eat only cooked food, but there is plenty to choose from. Yuval also cooked most evenings. Unlike his siblings who were always into cooking, for him this is a relatively new hobby, but he is a quick study and it was all yummy! My blood numbers are improving, and I am keep getting stronger physically. Even my fatigue is getting better slowly, and I can concentrate for longer periods. I re...

Happy holidays This is certainly happening here. Most of the family is visiting again for a week — here is some of what we did: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM4rpBa1m72cCTMbJUbQ1PGl4fjiyeu5cljj9acz8I2U3N-FOleVDctP-mWVC1ahg?key=SkRmNS10M1U1NWRTZ1J5VkxuWm92RXlZeWdBQnlR  One highlight for me was riding bicycles again after a very long time - we went for an hour around Central Park. Pics are better than many words... Happy New Year!

Things here continue to move along nicely. Here are a few more milestones from the past week.   Yesterday I got the last scheduled treatment at the hospital!     From now on, if all goes well, it will be only blood tests.   The results of these continue to be very good. For example, my hemoglobin level went above 10 for the first time since the beginning of this illness (there was a blip during one of the early treatments when this happened, and soon fell again, but mostly I was hovering between 7-8). I have no idea where above 10 this level will stabilize (normal for adult males is between 13 and 16), but being very anemic for so long I can feel and appreciate this increase in the ability of my blood to carry oxygen (e.g. my heart rate is going appropriately down, which affects any physical activity).   Another piece of good news came from the pathology report of my bone marrow biopsy 2 weeks ago. Recall I explained the notion of chimerism – basically what...

A quick post as there is nothing much to report. Avi is doing well and is getting stronger. He even started growing back some facial hair! The last ten days were very uneventful – we took some walks, saw many friends, had our first movie outing (on Tuesday afternoon, the theater was almost completely empty). We saw Knives Out which we both enjoyed a lot and highly recommend. And of course Avi had blood tests every 3-4 days, and the numbers are all steadily improving. He also got his weekly Rituxan infusions – will get the last one on Friday. Yuval and Vivian will arrive on Thursday morning and stay with us. Einat, Sahar, Tamar and Nuri will arrive Friday. They won't stay with us but we plan to hang out together as much as possible. Tamar will surely love the Christmas decorations and festivities —it will be a novel experience for her.

It is getting hard to find “news” as the past week has shown, and so the rate of our posts may go down. Be assured that this is a good sign! As some of you may know, transplant teams at hospitals like to name the transplant date as a “second birthday’’. My transplant was on November 5, so I am officially one month old! And I got a very nice gift for it. On Tuesday, on day +28, I had my first bone marrow biopsy after transplant. While most results will take a week or two to arrive, my doctor (who is at a conference in Florida) asked his nurse to call me with preliminary results that excited him: no lymphoma cells were found! It is the first time in 2.5 years that my marrow seems cancer-free!   This disappearance of cancer cells may be due to the EPOCH chemo I got just before transplant (a biopsy before the last round of EPOCH showed the cancerous cells decreased to 0.36% of all white cells, and perhaps the last round killed the rest).    Or perhaps the new immune ...