Today is the 3rd New Year Eve I have the chance to share with my family and friends since the graft I had on June 24th 2016! I think it is the right time to thank the fantastic team at Saint Antoine hospital and in particular my kind graft doctor, also my anonymous donor (without her I would not be around), my family who was and is there to support me in good and not so good days, without forgetting my friends…
I would like to share with you the recent addition to my big collection of Saint Antoine’s statues: they come from various churches in France and abroad. Thank you my family and my friends! And keep sending me your new discoveries!
In the first week of the new year, I will have my first apointment at Tenon hospital in dermatology: carcinomas are still presnt, so I might need some surgery to remove them. I will take the oportunity to ask for a “lifting” :-)!
Then I will have my last vaccine…
I hope you will have all a wonderful year 2019: may all your dreams become real!
Two years ago, for Christmas, as a gift, I received a ticket good for 5 stained glass courses at http://www.irisations.com/Irisations-index-vitrail-Paris-en. Although I already had a training on stained glass a few years ago, I was a beginner. Under the guidance of Tatiana, I learned again the basics…
Made in Chartres a few years ago:
I was just 8 months after the graft, and I was hardly strong enough to cut the glass…After standing in front of “the bench” for 3 hours, I was exhausted…Â crying when being alone in the car on my way back home. Then, slowly, I came back to life :-)!
Here is my first “masterpiece”: it took me hours to finish it, although it is not so well done!
It is now in Toronto: international recognition ah ah!
My second project came from a stained glass “window” I had noticed in a small church on an island in the golf du morbihan… I was overconfident! So many pieces… Well at the end, I made it, thanks again to Tatiana.
For the third project, I decided to try the classical stained glass, using lead (the first two projects were “Tiffany” style). The idea came from the web….
For the last project, completed last friday, I went back to the “Tiffany style”, taking the idea again from internet…
With time, I am becoming “addicted” to stained glass :-)! Why? Maybe because it is a kind of substitute to the experiments I did for years in organic synthesis. Making new molecules is a kind of “creativity”, as it is to make stained glass (maybe I am pushing too fare the meaning of “creativity” ;-)!)
Anyway, last friday I started a new project….
Before closing this post, I would like to point out that if I can do projects like the ones I described above it is because I was lucky enough to meet the fantastic group of people at Saint Antoine hospital and in particular my kind graft doctor, of course my anonymous donor, and my wonderful family: even when fare way, you are all within me all the time!
As you all know, after the chemotherapy used “to wash out” all the bad hematopoietic stem cells , all the old good immune system I made 60 years to build was gone…
In early 2017, then at the end of 2018, I started a campaign of vaccines against stretococcus pneumoniae, diphteria, tetanos, whooping cough, hepatitis B, poliomyelitis, haemophilus influenzoe,pneumococcal infection, measles, mumps, rubella. Of course I had also the flue vaccine!
I am almost at the end of the campaign…
Today, December 19th 2018, I had the first shot of the last vaccine: chicken pox. In a month, I will have the second shot, and I will be fully covered as a newborn!
However, when I had my small number of whites cells, long long time ago, I was never sick: no infections, a mystery for doctors! But I had my old good immune system working! Nowdays, it is not the same story: I had twice a cold, something I don’t remember I had for years before. For the last cold, which is not finish yet, I did not do anything against it: I am trying to build my own immune system by giving it something to fight against! From a biological stand point, I might be wrong, but who cares :-)!
Since this blog is made to share my experiences, I would like also to speak about something which is disturbing me: it is the fatigue I am experiencing whenever I am doing some activities: I feel tired… It was not like that in the “old good times” ;-)! On talking of this problem with my kind graft doctor, she said that it is a situation more than half of the people who had stem cells transplants are reporting. Nobody knows from where it comes. She also told me that she has no “magic bullet” available to help. It is OK, I still like her :-)!
It is very informative, but no cure offered of course…. but I don’t feel alone :-)!
I also made a blood analysis, since it was already 2 months I did one: according to my kind graft doctor everything looks OK, although there are “signs” of a viral infection…. the cold!
Anyway, it does prevent us to travel! Last week, we went to Britanny: Saint Malo, Cancale, Dol de Bretagne. here are some photos taken around those places…
We also visited the Mucha Exhibit at the Luxembourg museum… Photos!
ppmhk 