Howdy dudes. It appears like summer may have left us and autumn is now here in it’s place. I hope you’ve had a good month or so and things are going well for you, despite energy, food and mortgage prices.

I have been back and forth a couple of times to hospital since my last post. Nothing serious (well other than my cancer), just routine checks and follow ups. The big news was they thought I had permanent scarring on my lung from pneumonia. But having had a cat scan more recently (more radiation hurrah!). The shadow seems to have gone altogether from my lower left lung and the slight shadow in my top right may well have gone by now too. (I have an x-ray booked in). So that’s great news. Looks like no long term damage to the old oxygen grabbers!

Additionally I had a blood test to follow up and got some good results. I had been down to 0.2 lymphocytes after covid (1-4 is normal) and 0.4 for most of the year after chemo. This is the white cell that fights viruses, so pretty important. At last check it was 0.7, which was good. This time it was …..

1.

So I am officially no longer immunosuppressed (still low but normal human range). The only thing we are uncertain of is the immunoglobulin level (the thing that remembers what you have fought off and is ready next time). So we need to work this out, as it’s quite important for vaccines and the like to take. Still great news. :).

Finally my ferritin levels are at 1000 (iron). As you may remember my many bags of blood donations that I had to have last year shot my iron up as high as 3000. (Should be 20-250). So we are getting there but I will still need to go and give blood every month, so they can throw it in the bin and my body can then release more of the iron. I’ll do this until in back to normal, so likely six or so more bags. Sadly I don’t get the certificate most people get for giving blood, but seems I’m currently negative 8, I can understand why not. :).

So all in all very good news. The white blood cell cancer has been reduced and is now back to healthy levels. The spleen is now down to 17 CMS from 30 and the hemoglobin is a robust 16.5 (should be 13.2-16.6). The only outlier is the iron. Hopefully from here the appointments might spread out again and we can go back to watch and wait. Ten years of that would be just grand, but right now I’m just content with how it’s all going.

So I can return to London, but should avoid the tube and rush hours, and I will hopefully keep feeling well. Very good news indeed. Here’s some random photos to celebrate!