Day +30 - Friend,KL Tan

Photo : KL Tan and his wife, Betty

I am fine today, This morning I jog for about 5 minutes + 30 minute walk. Facing sleeping difficulties , hard to get deep sleep hours, keep on wake up.

I enjoy talking with KL Tan and Betty. Will like to pay them a visit in KK next year, and enjoy a bowl of seafood noodles where I certainly do for breakfast when visiting KK.

KL Tan is from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Diagnosed with CMML ( chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia) recently. Prior , KL received treatment nearly a year at local Kota Kinabalu hospital as blood disorder, the doctor failed to check it is CML. When KL found the situation is getting worst, he flew over to SJMC, and doctor confirm it is CML , and need medical treatment instantly, as it can be fatal within months. KL have completed the treatment from Chemo to stem cell transplant within 3 months. He will be back to KK by 13 Dec. I learn a lot from KL , we have similarity, both of us Civil Engineer , gluttony (贪吃）on food.

happiness

SK Tey have sent me a CD from Kuantan, The Power of Now - A Guide to SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT By Eckhart Tolle, I am reading it now, good attraction share with yours about happiness

"A Buddhist monk once told me: 'All I have learned in the twenty years that I have been a monk I can sum up in one sentence: All that arises passes away. This I know." What he meant, of course, was this:I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus have I found peace.To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace "

Day +29 - Bloods Count

I am feeling OK today. Today is 29 days after my transplant. Dr. Teh have scheduled me for Bone Marrow test on next Monday Noon. This is their standard procedure to conduct biopsy investigation at 30 days and 100 days after transplant, to check the engraftment, chromosome xy, and any abnormal cell .



The Blood count results on Friday : ( Day +29 after transplant)

Haemoglobin - 11.1 ( normal 13 to 18)

Platelets - 110 ( normal 150 to 400)

Total White Count - 5.1 ( normal 4.0 to 11.0)



Magnesium -0.40 ( normal 0.74 to 0.99) . Treatment received on friday is magnesium infusion.



I visited KL Tan at SDMC yesterday. He was admitted due to fever since Monday. KL have his allorgenic transplant done on Aug 2008, and the progress is good. KL was diagnosed CML ( Chronic myeloid Leukaemia) in early 2008. Typical signs and symptoms of CML patients are discovered during routine blood testing, some symptoms that are appears are rather non specific, such fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss. Some have intermittent fever, bone pain and sometimes bleeding. The typical blood count is very high white cells. I will get KL to share his CML experiences.

Day +993 :Raw Food

I was advised by someone to eat raw vegetable or take raw vegetable juice after I was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Someone even advised me to have raw vegetable juice as my main diet during my first chemotherapy. This is in fact a very dangerous advice as consuming raw vegetable juice exposes the patient who is weak in immunity during chemotherapy to infection.
If someone proposes you to convert to raw food diet, do have a second thought. An article on The New York Times talking about the best way to cook the vegetables mentioned a recent research on raw food diet.
“Surprisingly, raw and plain vegetables are not always best. In The British Journal of Nutrition next month, researchers will report a study involving 198 Germans who strictly adhered to a raw food diet, meaning that 95 percent of their total food intake came from raw food. They had normal levels of vitamin A and relatively high levels of beta carotene.
But they fell short when it came to lycopene, a carotenoid found in tomatoes and other red-pigmented vegetables that is one of the most potent antioxidants. Nearly 80 percent of them had plasma lycopene levels below average.
“There is a misperception that raw foods are always going to be better,” says Steven K. Clinton, a nutrition researcher and professor of internal medicine in the medical oncology division at Ohio State University. “For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful.””
The whole article can be read here, .

Day +28 Medicine Taking

I am fine today. I just back from 30 minutes garden wlak.

This is my Day 28 after transplant. My hair lost again due to conditioning treatment prior to stem cell transplant.Many people asked me what medicine I am taking now. So I will give you some picture about the medicine that I consume everyday. At Day +28 after transplant , 21 table per day consumption

Ciclosporin - 6 table

Fluconazole - 2 table

Antiaviral - 2 table

Prednisolone - 8 table

Nextum - 1 table

Supradyn - 4 table ( multi vitamin)

The most important drug that I am taking now is called Ciclosporin. It is used to prevent Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). Ciclosporin is an immunosuppressant drug widely used post-allogeneic organ transplant to reduce the activity of the patient's immune system and so the risk of organ rejection. In other words, it carries a message to the immune system, “Good boy, don’t attack them, they are friends.” This prevents the immune system to attack the organs.However, this message might also make the immune system makes friend with real enemies such as bacterial, virus and fungus, resulting the patient getting infection easily.

Today, my appointment for blood test and addressing for my PICC port, which was inserted by a minor operation at my arm, these port can be used to repeatedly for drug administration, blood taking and blood transfusion. they are useful and could be kept for months, however they need to be look after as problems such as infection and blockage can occur. careful aseptic handling and regular flushing with heparin are part of essential maintenance care.

Day +27 Create my first blog

I feel good today, able to to walk exercise around my car porch for half an hour. The energy seem to be getting back.
I just knew a friend work in IT, create a blog about sharing his AML healing process, and I decided I should do the same, to share my experiences. This IT friend, Sarawak, has stayed in Puchong Jaya for more than 10 years, diagnosed with AML in DEC 2005, have stem cell transplant done in UH in 2006, using his elder sister as donor, provide much info about his healing process.