Day Zero: My New Birth

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Finally, after six long days of high dose chemo, today is the day I get my stem cells back (they were collected a few weeks ago). After six longs days hooked up nights and days to a pump (chemo during the day at the cancer care center and fluids and medication at home through a pump in a bag pack), this umbilical cord is about to be definitely cut.

On the seventh day if this journey, The Lord is granting me a new life, a new birth, a re birth. He is about to resuscitate me. Praise God! Indeed, after such high dose chemo treatment, if nothing else was done, my blood system and therefore my immune system will keep dying, and me with it. But thanks to my own stem cells that we collected last month, my body will be able to “reset” and fortunately to start again the production of blood cells, including the precious white blood cells that compose the immune system.

It is really a tremendous miracle that is happening today thanks to God. I will keep forever this date as my new birthday and I invite you all to celebrate today with us. And praise The Lord. Of course, as everything else related to cancer treatment, it is not going to happen overnight. In fact, my blood count is expected to drop even lower in the next few days, and everyday I will have to be monitored closely because my immune system will be very, very, very low, almost out. And then we expect that my counts will start to rise again, slowly, then more rapidly, until they are back to normal. This should happen within two weeks.

Until then, I may feel down, hurt, bad, but no worry, cancer will never get my soul and my spirit. I might get too tired to post on this blog. Or not. We will see.

I would like to take the opportunity of this great day to focus my attention and prayers to a friend of mine whose wife had leukemia last year (diagnosed soon after me), and was finally on remission at the end of last year. Over the weekend, I heard she relapsed and she is now in need of a donor for a bone marrow transplant for a treatment. Therefore, I invite you to join me and her friends to pray for her so she can find a donor very soon and be treated quickly for a full remission, so she can have a normal and healthy life with her husband and her little girl.

Thank you for her. Thank you for your support.

And to celebrate this new birth, I hope you will enjoy this song – “Born To Be Alive” (by Patrick Hernandez) – that was suggested to me by my friend Ingrid. I don’t think my fellow Americans know this song who was a great hit in the 60s in France. Lots of energy, craziness and good vibes. Everything we need for a birthday!

See you for the next story.