Team Tony Lives On

It's been nearly 6 months since I've said anything about our Amyloidosis Awareness Folding@Home team. Thanks to the help of a number of anonymous users, our team is still ranked around 450th place (out of nearly 100,000), and we have scored over 2.2 million points.

I must admit that I have not been contributing recently. However, that has changed, now that I have a new quad-core Pentium box that has nothing else better to do!

Folding@Home is a program which uses the "idle" cycles of your computer (and Playstation 3!) to compute simulations of protein-folding, which is leading to cures for many protein-folding disorders (which amyloidosis is a part of). If you leave your computer on all the time, it is an easy way to show your support for amyloidosis awareness, and make a difference. The simulations that the scientists are running at Stanford are quite complex, and we need as people as we can to contribute.

Download the client, then check out the Team Tony website for more information on setting it up.

November Update

It's 15 months past my second transplant, and 28 months past my first transplant. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed. My body is still dealing with the fallout from both of these treatments. The side effects of high-dose chemotherapy are slight, but real.

I'm sure you've realized that the updates to the blog have been getting leaner and leaner as the months roll by. This is for two reasons. First, there hasn't been much to talk about. My condition is 'stable' for the time being, and most of the physical issues related to disease are calming down. My edema is a little better, and when I 'cheat' on my low-sodium diet, I'm able to tolerate it better than I had in the past. I'm still on the water pills and ACE inhibitors, which I take on an 'as needed' basis. Usually this works out to be every other day. I'm still on the Crestor and Niaspan, and if my cardiologist has his way, I'll be on it for quite some time.

Second, I have been a little more active with my work, so my opportunities to sit down and writing an entry into the blog are becoming more rare. I put all of my energy in doing my work, which leaves little left at the end of the day. I am able to manage better, but my focus is still on getting through each day in one piece! Thankfully, I am now able to put in a full day of work -- something I couldn't have said six months ago.

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November brings two followup appointments: one with my kidney doctor, and one with the cardiologist. I do labs at the beginning of next week. Hopefully I will continue to get good news from both of them, although I expect that any progress that I've made will be incredibly small. It really looks like that it will literally take years to bring myself physically (and mentally) back to the level that I was before I got sick.

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Just a reminder that the Boston Amyloidosis Support Group meeting will be
taking place at Boston Medical on November 17. If you are interested, please check out my post below for more information.