Somewhat uncomfortable

I've now had 4 bone marrow aspiration procedures here in addition to the 4 I've had before. Yesterday I was delighted to have the same person that did the first one here. I asked about her the other times, and was told she only worked on Thursday, but there she was on a Friday! That was nice, but what's not so nice were the 2 skin biopsies she took from the same site. It's somewhat uncomfortable, so that's going to slow me down for a couple of days. The bone marrow aspiration doesn't bother me afterwards nearly as much. Let's hope for good test results.

This week was very busy, with an X-ray, medical photographs, and pulmonary function tests. I did well on the DLCO (diffuse lung capacity for carbon monoxide) test, and scored 3 percentage points higher than last time. No improvement was expected, really, even with the supplemental alpha-1 antitrypsin, so it's good news that it didn't go down. I asked them to test my alpha-1 antitrypsin level, and it was nearly normal, so apparently the change in blood genetics did not change this. The near normal level is probably due to the supplementation, instead.

The main challenge now is to try to offset the magnesium depletion that some of the anti-rejection drugs cause, without resorting to IV supplementation. I'm trying some new tablets, because I think I have to be able to regulate this before I leave. The CMV count finally went back down to zero, and since this is a very sensitive DNA test, I was able to immediately stop the anti-viral drugs.

Target date for going home: June 20th