September Update

My mom told me the other day, "Christopher, you haven't updated your blog since last April."

"Well duh, Mom, I had better things to do!"

But then I got to thinking that I probably should write an update, because my last post started with a gross picture of the interior of my bronchial tubes... and that was the first thing people would see when they were checking out my blog.

Since last April, things have been pretty busy, to say the least!

Our beautiful daughter, Madeline Grace Poynter, was born at Victoria General Hospital on May 17th, 2015, at 5:39 PM, which was five days early. She weighed a healthy 8 lbs 1 oz and had a good strong scream, right from the get-go!

Here are a couple pictures of Madeline at birth:

...and here are a couple pictures of Madeline, now, at four months old!

It was nice that both Kaitlin and I were able to be at home for the first four months of Madeline's life, as I was on medical leave for the school year. During the summer I did some DJ work on the weekends and enjoyed being a dad from Monday to Friday.

Now that it's September I am back to teaching. I got a two-day-per-week contract as the music teacher at Sangster Elementary School and I am loving it so far! I am on the sub list for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I may consider picking up another contract at some point as well. I am fairly busy with DJ work on the weekends throughout the fall though, so I like the flexibility of being able to take a Friday or Monday off when I need to.

In terms of my health, I was doing great, but after one week of teaching I've already caught a cold. I guess that's what happens when you stick a guy with no immunity into an elementary school. Unfortunately I will probably be catching a lot of colds this year.

In other news I had my third round of post-transplant vaccinations last week. The whole vaccination thing got delayed by a few months because of my neutrophil issues but those are 'mostly' under control for now. I am still occasionally taking Neupogen but it seems like my bone marrow is slowly starting to get the hang of neutrophil production again. Yay vaccinations!

We had one more scare a few weeks ago when I developed a cough again. It got pretty bad to the point that my oncologist sent me for a CT scan to make sure my tumour wasn't growing again, but thankfully the scan came back clean.

I could write a whole post on the anxiety surrounding the fear of relapse, but I'd rather just finish up this one and move on.

So.... that's all for now! My next oncologist check-up is in November, so if there is anything to report, I will write another post then. Right now it's time to go blow my nose and get on with my life!

Thanks for reading :)

Christopher