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Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) was the diagnosis I received on November 1, 2005. I went into the clinic three months earlier because of a tightness in my chest, left side, resulting even from a short walk out to my car. Then the week before diagnosis I went in because of a strange bulge in the left side of my abdomen, felt when lying in bed on my back. Turned out to be a rather large spleen, later measured at 11cm below the rib cage.

Since then, my family and I have been through some trying times. And as a Naval Officer stationed overseas in the UK and with family and friends living throughout the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Japan and Australia, I decided early on that it would be easier to update everyone via a blog than by email or phone.

I tried, and resisted, Gleevec. I also tried Sprycel but I proved intolerant to it because my counts dropped as soon as I took more than 50mg daily (standard is 100 to 140 mg daily). So I turned to a bone marrow transplant, which I underwent November 31, 2007 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. I have since been dealing with chronic graft versus host disease (GVHD) issues with my GI tract (resolved), eyes, mouth, and now my lungs. The lung problem is pretty bad as I hve been diagnosed with bronchial obliterans and now have only 42 percent lung function and am on oxygen a great deal of the time.

But not to fear; I am hanging in there, keeping my spirits up and continuing with my life. Through this blog, people have followed my treatment plans through success and failures, various types of medical appointments and procedures, my fluctuating counts, etc. Besides information detailing my own experiences, I also try to include general aspects of CML, various forms of treatment and the experiences of a stem cell transplant.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

MediKidz

Thank you to one of my blog followers, Lucia, for bringing this website to my attention. This site provides children with medical information in terms they can understand. There are the MediKidz, comic book figures that children can relate to, and a virtual medical center world and virtual world inside the human body. Very cool!

Check it out at http://www.medikidz.com/home.

Posted by David Cox

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