Last week I was told the great news that I’m once again cancer free! This marks the third time I’ve heard this news after my initial diagnosis and then my relapse.

The Blinatumomab did its job after two 28 day home infusions, but it made me feel absolutely horrible in the process. Extreme fatigue, nausea, and more. Thankfully pretty much as soon as I was disconnected from it, all of that went away and I’m back to my new normal. I lost a ton of muscle mass during all of this so things like stairs are still hard but I’m getting there.

Additionally I’m in the process of returning to work. My vision issues are still a huge problem however. I have to use larger text and I still haven’t driven since about April.

Still, it feels good to be back to my normal-ish self. Let’s just hope I stay this way this time!

Unfortunately my bad luck and health complications continue. Last week was a roller coaster of events.

My ommaya reservoir, used to access my spinal fluid for samples and chemo, clogged because of frequent use and it being installed ever so slightly in the wrong place. So on Monday, they opened my scalp back up and replaced it with a fresh reservoir. Everything went perfectly fine, or so I thought, and I went home Tuesday morning after an overnight observation stay at the hospital.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up with an absolutely horrible headache. I took some strong prescription pain killers but they didn’t help and the throbbing headache got worse. Eventually it got unbearably bad and I begged to be taken to the ER. I was the worst headache I’ve ever had and probably a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. At the hospital I was able to get some IV pain medication which is stronger and faster acting and that helped quite a bit.

They determined my headaches were being caused by meningitis which in turn was caused by a bacterial infection in my brain, almost certainly a complication of the surgery. To make treatment easier and more effective, they decided to remove the reservoir that they had just put in only a few days before. Treatment of the infection with IV antibiotics eventually cut down and stopped the headaches, but I have to continue the antibiotics at home for about another week.

It seems the complications and issues never stop for me, but unlike the vision issues, at least this one wasn’t anything permanent.

Can I be done now please?

I had a followup with my neuro-ophthalmologist yesterday to see how my vision was improving after the issues I started having last month. I’ve tried to be optimistic and stay positive since first getting sick, but this was a tough one.

While the blurriness has lessened significantly, from an estimated 20/400 to 20/40, I still have some quite significant vision issues. Infact I was surprised to learn that my doctor didn’t expect me to recover as well as I have — he had been quite concerned the first time he saw me.

After some research, he currently thinks that all of this was caused by an very rare side effect of an antibiotic I had been taking for over a year. It’s purpose was prevent me from catching a certain type of pneumonia due to my weakened immune system. The discovery of odd-looking white blood cells (aka probably cancer) in my spinal fluid was likely just coincidental. The antibiotic caused pressure in my optical nerves, killing off some of the cells contained within. We are born with more than we need so the hope is that things will continue to improve over as long as the upcoming year, but real damage was done and that’s permanent and disappointing.

The best way I can think of to describe my current vision is that my eyes are now using crappy data cables. The world seems lower “resolution” (I have to use bigger fonts on digital devices) and the contrast and brightness of things has gone down. I have trouble telling some similar colors apart, but that varies by day and time. I had to change the colors in my code editors and I can no longer make out the individual pixels on a screen, and that really sucks.

Additionally I currently have a blind spot sort of shaped like a C in the middle of my right eye. My brain is learning to compensate for it including switching which eye is my dominate one, but it’s unlikely that the blindspot will heal. But who knows? Maybe I’ll have some good luck to counter the previous horrendous luck that I’ve had.

So overall I guess I’m lucky that things have improved as well as they have, but the fact that things are unlikely to return to perfect like they were before is hugely crushing. At the end of the day though, being able to drive again at some point is all I really want and that isn’t looking unlikely. A huge relief!

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first bone marrow transplant. Despite a relapse last fall, things had actually been going really well. A bone marrow biopsy came back completely clean as expected, all of my blood counts were looking great, and I was finally feeling well enough that I was getting ready to move back home to my own place after living with my mom for over a year. Then things went to shit.

In mid-April, the vision in my left eye started getting a little blurry. In less than a week, both of my eyes went super blurry to the point that I couldn’t use my phone or laptop. I saw an eye doctor who scheduled an urgent MRI that same day. The MRI revealed pressure on the back of my eye and optic nerve, but no pressure on my brain thankfully. Eye surgery was scheduled for the next day to cut a hole in my optic nerve to relieve the pressure. Unfortunately it didn’t help at all.

Around the same time, test results came back from my spinal fluid showing the existence of oddly shaped white blood cells (likely leukemia). This was a first for me since, although I had received preventative chemo into my spinal fluid, it had remained clean previously.

Doctors then and now still don’t know what is causing the vision issues, but their guess is it is somehow related to the leukemia found in my spinal fluid. They’ve been treating it via twice-weekly lumbar punctures in which they inject chemo drugs, but those are a bit painful and each one carries a small risk of infection. So as an alternative to those punctures, earlier this week I had surgery to cut a hole in my skull for an Ommaya reservoir for easier access to my spinal fluid.

My latest spinal fluid test came back clean so the chemo is working, but they’ll continue giving me the chemo for a while to make sure it stays clean. The access reservoir will still be worth it in the long run.

The best news is that treatment of my spinal fluid seems to be having a positive effect on my vision. I still have some vision loss in the center of my right eye, but the overall blurriness is slowly going down. I’m actually managing to type this post myself instead of having to transcribe it to a family member like I was doing with email previously. I still can’t drive or work though which is really tough.

Hopefully my vision continues to improve and eventually returns to normal. That hope is what’s keeping me together right now. I can’t imagine life without being able to drive!