Day + 39 Great Doc. Appt.

I had a great Mesa clinic appointment at Banner Children's with Doctor Katsanis today. Did you know, Dr. K drives up from Tucson once or twice a month to visit all his Greater Phoenix Area patients, how nice is that?! Good thing he actually drives a Tesla (thanks Elon Musk) to get him back and forth without paying for gas! Nice. 

My labs are UP again! This is so crazy, my hemoglobin went up from 9.6 to 10.2!!! I'm literally making my own red blood cells for the first time in 20 years, pinch me. Last week my retic was 13.3 and it was 18 something today - WHAT?! Go Maddy's cells go. My retic has been m.i.a and to have it be so high on it's own, there are no words. My parents are so used to it being zero ... they get so happy/emotional seeing it so high. My platelets were even higher at 63, they are the last cells to appear after a bone marrow transplant, and they are so important. Our family didn't realize exactly how needed they are simply to be alive, until I desperately needed them. I needed them everyday for almost 2 weeks when I had ZERO counts after the radiation and chemotherapy. 

Since I had such a good doctor appointment, we canceled my Thursday clinic visit and I'll just be going once a week now. This is SO weird. But so cool at the same time, and I haven't needed a blood transfusion since April 1st. How ironic that last year on April 1st, I had  a TRALI (transfusion related acute lung injury)  and almost died. April first is no joke to me, haha.

There are still a few shirts left from my Mia's Making Marrow Campaign with the proceeds going to Doctor Katasnis' Steele Children's Research. If you would like to just make a donation to him, please feel free, but make sure you say FOR: pediatric hem / oncology division. I would be so thankful!!! Nothing would make me happier than helping Dr. K. receive money to help in research with his lab and curing kids via Haploidentical Transplants. He cured me after 20 years of living off of others peoples blood, how could I ever thank him enough?!