I crash through shale and splash in oil

Oblivion awaits

Fri Jan 3, 2025
AML 3.0 UCSF stem-cell transplant - Day +134
Blogging tunes: SomaFM: Groove Salad

In my last post on Dec 19, 2024 I said: “Anyway, my next appointment is this coming Monday. I’ll post a super quick pre-Xmas/Hanukkah update with the counts (and any supporting info I get from my docs) so we can see what’s going on with this plateau.”

Well, that didn’t happen. Once again I over-committed and under-delivered. Sigh. Hopefully this post will make up for it.

As we’re back to the “appointments every 2 weeks” cadence, I had UCSF appointment yesterday afternoon, so now we have two more data points of counts (yesterday and 12/23/24) along with some updated info on this “plateau” thing. Before we get there, a couple of announcements to ring in 2025.

First and foremost, the first Chum gig of 2025 is confirmed and, yes, I’m playing. It will be at one of our favorite venues, The Crazy Horse, in Nevada City (Grass Valley), CA. Tickets and more info here:
[ Tickets / Venue / Vids | Chum Facebook Event Page ]

Hopefully some Bay Area folks can make the trek and maybe some non Bay Area folks will surprise us!

Secondly, 2025 will feature something never before done in the 14+ years of jgwkia.com: guest blog posts.

That’s right, the blog post after this one — will likely drop (Rob knows how much I dislike this verb, but what the hey, it’s better than Irwin) late next week — is authored (anonymously) by an avid jgwkia.com reader who was kind enough to write up his thoughts based on a conversation we had a few weeks ago. If anyone else is interested in authoring a guest blog here (either anonymously or not), please let me know and we can discuss. If you receive this post in your email inbox, just reply and it will come to me. Otherwise, leave a comment on substack or just shoot me a message at jaygee [at} gmail {dot) com.

OK… on to the update. Last time I posted this plateau pic. Unfortunately, very little has changed. In fact, I’ve been fighting some nasty-ass bug/flu whatever-the-fuck for the past 10 days or so. Every time I think it’s finally gone and I push myself a little, I wake up feeling like shit. Like, yesterday, after some work in the morning and a UCSF appointment in afternoon, Chum had a rehearsal — first time in over a year! — so you could say it was a full day. This morning? I woke up feeling like a Mack truck had leveled me.

So what’s the deal? I dunno. We’re at day +134 now… so a couple weeks away from major milestone #4 (Day +150), but look at the chart from the last several weeks:

And the accompanying data:

Now compare this to, say, for example, Day +40 to Day +90 where we were clearly going up-and-to-the-right.

According to Dr. Lee, it’s very likely that this flu/infection/virus/bug is pulling my counts down (esp HGB and ANC). The WBC and ANC are still within (the low end of) normal range… still it’s rough having clear, tangible improvement every week for a couple months only to be in a multi-week plateau (or slight decline).

I think we need to just see if this thing runs its course and what my counts look like at my next appointment on Jan 17 (which will be day +148).

So that’s it. We’re in a holding pattern. Could be better, could be worse.

I’ve been able to get some hikes in (see the high “yellow stars” days) but I haven’t ridden the Peloton in weeks. I think I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and start doing some leisurely rides and not worry that the “blue stars” are gonna be at the bottom of the graph. The weight drop last week corresponds to the worst of this flu thing. SSRF! (IYKYK)

Woah… late breaking real-time news. I just got a new test result in my MyChart and an accompanying message from Dr. Lee a few minutes later. Seems my CMV — stands for Cytomegalovirus — spiked from 47 (last visit) to almost 800 (yesterday). That’s not crazy high, but it’s high enough to take action. It’s been up before and we’ve treated it with Valganciclovir. Unclear whether we’ll need to do this again, whether it’s related to (or a symptom of) this flu/whatever.

Looks like I’ll still be able to go SoCal on Monday (business trip) as long as don’t feel worse, but I’ll need to get labs the day after I get back (Friday).

OK, just got labs appointment for Jan 10 squared away, and heard from Dr. Lee again. We’re restarting the Valganciclovir. Fortunately, I still have a bunch of it so we’ll be good for next week at least.

Annnnyhoooo… back to the update.

Despite all these challenges, it’s been a pretty awesome break with the fam. We did our normal thing Hanukkah/Christmas thing with some presents, some movies, lots of sports, etc.

One thing I did this year for the fam is get a bunch of photos printed: some framed and some on canvas. Here are a few examples:

You can’t tell from this small iPhone image of this, but this high-rez pano came out really nice. You can see more Bryce photos from this summer (including this pano) here.

Here’s a canvas print of the Point Lobos sunset (from a couple years ago) hung up in my home office.

And here’s a frame of three Bryce pics from Heather’s and my belated honeymoon in 2007. Dozens more are here in this flickr set. Thanks to Eyan for all the Photoshop help and for working with the print/frame lads.

Oh, here are links to my last couple hikes:

• China Camp Oakridge/Bayview with kids

• Miwok and Turtleback hike with H

And lastly, here are two awesome presents Heather got me.

Awesome Fuck Cancer candle!

Awesome Iggles T-shirt (logo on front) with ^this^ on the back. ‘99 is the year we started dating. I always sign my blogs “jgwkiaaaa” (4 a’s — jg will kick its ass again and again) but just about everyone else writes “jgwkiaaa” (one “a” for each leukemia battle). Both are fine. And as we know, there’s not going to be 4th time so we don’t have to worry about the confusion that might cause!

Heather also got Katniss jammie bottoms for all four of us. Sorry, no pic.

Alright. That’s what I got for today. Crazy times. Again, please let me know if you’re interested in guest blogging.

Happy 2025 to all and Go Birds!

iwkiaaaa

P.S. Y’all ever seen any video of my original rock/jam band yeP! from the 90s? Well check out this gem called Libido. Suggest full screen video on computer with lights down — this video is dark — and volume up. Thanks Matty for posting it to Vimeo all those years ago. I wrote all the music for this song: all the guitar parts, KB parts, vox arrangement, etc. 03:55 to 04:26 is probably the most creative thing I ever wrote — very Genesis-like. First section is in 13 (3334), second section in 11 (3332). Only thing I didn’t write was the lyrics. That was all Lory. Been trying to track him down but can’t seem to find him. If you’re out there, Lory, please get in touch.

Hard to believe I ever played with this much energy on stage. This was 29 years ago. I was 25. If you wanna check out our 3 albums — one studio, one live, one… I don’t even know what to call it :) — they are on Spotify. The live album — Bosco’s Magic Shop — has a nice soundboard of Libido. Note that yeP!onymous wouldn’t have been possible without some help from friends and family. Thanks, Mike!