Over the line

Today the platelets hit 77 billion/liter, and the neutrophils hit 700 million/liter, both good enough to get me released after a few more formalities. Neither of these values is within the range considered "normal" yet, and the hemoglobin still has to come up from 9.9 grams/deciliter to something more like 13-14 before I will really have recovered the fundamentals; moreover, my understanding is that my new immune system will take a while longer to really be fully functional.

Also, the successful completion (or really near-completion) of the transplant is in no sense a cure. The myeloma is still there, greatly weakened (we hope), but impossible to eradicate with any tools we now have. In the next couple of days, we'll have some data on how deep the response to treatment has been (basically how many, if any, of the tumor cells are detectable). That should help us work through the next steps.