New fuzz pic

Hello everyone. The Philly LiveSTRONG event weekend was incredible. I have so much to tell you about but unfortunately not enough time to do it justice right now. So for now you'll have to be satisfied with a new picture of my head fuzz that is a definite improvement from the prior one I had posted. YES, YES, YES, it is mostly gray but at least something is growing up there! LOL.

Thursday, August 21st.... status quo

Time for a quick update.
My INR blood test came up at 2.3 last week. That means that the coumadin dosage is perfect where it is and I was freed from the weekly visits to Dr. Richards. My next appointment isn’t until September 10th and he said that I’ll probably be able to come off of the coumadin by the end of September.

Aside from that the only excitement taking place right now is related to our first LiveSTRONG cycling event. And that will be taking place this weekend! The festivities start with a Fundraising Appreciation dinner on Saturday night in downtown Philly at the National Constitution Center. It is for those that have raised over $3,000 and thanks to your generous support I not only receive an invitation but since I’ve surpassed the $5,000 level I also get 2 additional tickets. It should be a blast. Three others from the Mintz’s Mentschen team will be there as well. Lance Armstrong will be speaking… lots of excitement as you can imagine.

The biggest news is that the Philly Mintz’s Mentschen group has exceeded $30,000 of fundraising. And the Austin team is very close to $10,000 despite their event being 3 months away! Very impressive numbers indeed. It’s all incredibly humbling and I hope to have the chance to thank our team again and again this weekend.

Oh!... I almost forgot to mention that my hair has started the slow process of growing back! There’s not too much happening with facial hair yet but I definitely have a decent crop of fuzz on my head. I’ll try to get some better pictures but for now please enjoy the one below.

INR Update

TGIF....
I just got back from my INR test and the reading was 2.5.
Therefore there's no change in the coumadin dosage and my next INR test is scheduled for Thursday, August 14th.

To be continued...

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Hello everyone.

My visit to Dr. Richards this past Monday to check the "coumadin affect" in my blood went well and yielded the results I was hoping for. These visits are for an INR test which produces a ratio indicating the ability of blood to clot. I needed something in the 2.0-3.0 range with the objective being to get the blood so that it's not too thick and not too thin. My INR was 2.0 on the nose. This was good enough for me to be able to stop the heparin injections. I don't know about Amy but that prompted a big WOO HOO from me. Not that the injections were that uncomfortable, because they weren't, but at least it's that one less thing for Amy and I to have to remember each day. The INR testing continues, however, and I'll be going back to Dr. Richards at 8:15am tomorrow morning. We need to make sure that the coumadin dosage is able to keep the INR in the desired range.

Last Saturday Dan Gerstenhaber and I got lucky and squeezed a 21.5 mile bike ride in between some really nasty rain storms. My cycling strength is still non-existent but as always it was great to be out on the bike.

With the Philly LiveSTRONG event looming ever closer the team fundraising has really been kicked up a notch. The Philly team alone has now raised $22,792 and our overall team total is now over $32,500! GO TEAM MENTSCHEN!!