{"id":126,"date":"2025-05-29T03:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=126"},"modified":"2025-09-27T20:35:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T20:35:54","slug":"health-update-first-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"Health Update (first in years!) Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long term readers of my weblog know that I started it way back in 2005, as I was commencing chemotherapy for mantle cell lymphoma<\/a>. I had been diagnosed in 2003 and we went with watchful waiting for a couple of years before there was a need for chemo. Since plenty of people were interested in my potential demise, I decided it was easier to just start the blog then establish an email list (As Judy Anderson liked to tell me "Tom it's always all about you."<\/strong>). At the time Facebook was just starting up and not many people were familiar with it. Nowadays most people would just write up their situation on facebook. <\/p>\n

My hospital from the get go was Memorial Sloan Kettering and my oncologist was and still is Dr. Andrew Zelenetz<\/a>. Chemotherapy was on an outpatient and weekend inpatient basis from September to December 2005.  Then in January I had a 20 day stay in MSK for high dose chemo and then a stem cell transplant – my own stem cells back to me to rebuild my immune system. And to make a long story short it all worked out with very little side effects (thank you Blessed Solanus Casey<\/a>…). Here I am getting the transplant<\/a> – which is very similar to a blood transfusion. I actually didn't feel as bad as I think I look in this picture. I was VERY fortunate – minimal side effects and able to keep working even while in Sloan. And I had the support of a HUGE number of family and friends – especially my great assistant and family friend Judy Anderson, who we miss every day. Here's something I posted on my blog – something Brigid had sent me two days post transplant.  Note from guest writer Brigid – Tim's song for Dad<\/a>.  Whew. Might embarrass Tim now. So bottom line I made a good recovery.<\/p>\n

The follow up was initially monthly, then quarterly, to semi-annually. Blood tests, CT scans – all good.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zelenetz told me before the chemotherapy began that the mortality rate was about 3-4% (but lower at MSK) from the chemotherapy and there was 100% lymphoma relapse within ten years. So I was fortunate that my relapse wasn't for nearly 16 years, in the summer of 2021. So that's what Part 2 will be about, my relapse. BUT – SPOILER ALERT – things are going well.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long term readers of my weblog know that I started it way back in 2005, as I was commencing chemotherapy for mantle cell lymphoma. I had been diagnosed in 2003 and we went with watchful waiting for a couple of years before there was a need for chemo. Since plenty of people were interested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6988,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/6988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}