Notes on Immune Systems and ineffective forms of Hand Washing

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the old cliche "you don't know what you have until it's gone"?  Never has the cliche been more true then with a guy that doesn't have an immune system.  Even with past experience of being imuno-compromised, I've always taken my immune system for granted.

I've always been the guy who would throw caution to the wind and eat at the sketchy buffet place because I had a 2 for 1 coupon.  I had pretty good faith in my body's ability to fight off whatever interesting organisms that I might have picked up.  I've always liked the idea of my body having these little mini microbial battles that ultimately made me stronger.

Interestingly, I think generally these little microbial battles have been solidly one sided.  I like to think of my immune system generally consisting of an entire battalion of US Special forces pitted against a group of mongol raiders from the 13th century.  Sure, the mongols would probably be terrifying warriors, but really, compared to an Abrams A1, I don't think we'd have much to worry about.  Occasionally, I might have had some skirmishes where my immune system took some time to adjust and conquer, but generally the sickest I've been in the past 9 years was a couple mild colds, and maybe some random stomach bugs.
One of the less then stellar things about cancer, is that it takes your immune system and downgrades everything from US Special Forces Status, to a bunch of guys with BB guns shooting from the hills.

Funny to think that it took me getting cancer twice to figure this out, but needless to say, this time around I have been a lot more militant about hygiene  and germ control.  When all you have in your immune system is a bunch of over-matched pea shooters, sometimes the best policy is retreat.
Natalie has been particularly astute, she has strategically placed hand sanitizers and soaps in various locations throughout the house, and very subtly reminds me to wash my hands.

I love kids, and am especially fond of my own, but that doesn't stop me from knowing that kids are walking, talking, mess making, germ factories.  Natalie and I have been really eager to work with Brad and Lucy to get them to understand the importance of germ control.  They have generally taken these types of jobs/lessons pretty seriously.  When I was still in the hospital, we had Lucy pretty well trained as a personal exercise motivator.  First thing she would do when she saw me was to say in a pretty dictatorial tone, "Dad, we need you to walk, We want you to walk!"  Hard to say no to a cute 4 year old who is acting like your own personal drill sergeant.

We've had some good discussions about germs, and hand washing, and about why it's very important right now to make sure that we wash our hands.

Natalie and I were having a conversation in our hallway right outside the bathroom.  2 minutes previous to this, we had asked Lucy to go in and wash her hands.  As we were talking we could hear Lucy go into the bathroom.  She's pretty quite until we hear her say, "WHOOOOOOOOOSH" , doing a pretty good impression of the sound the sink makes.  At no point does the faucet actually come on.
I look at Natalie, Natalie looks at me.  Did I daughter just pretend to wash her hands by making sink noises with her mouth?
She opens the door and looks at us innocently.

Us:  "did you wash your hands"
Lucy:  "Yeah"
Us:  "are you sure?"
Lucy: "Yeah"
Us: "let me smell your hands"
Lucy: "OK I'll wash them again" *smiling sheepishly

First, did my sweet little girl really just pretend to wash her hand by making a whooshing noise?  Second, did she really have the audacity to double down on the fib?  Wow.

We will, needless to say, be having some additional discussions on actual hand washing, as well as some conversations on honesty.

I suppose that was kind of a convoluted story to get to the news that I heard back from the lab, and it appears that I HAVE AN IMMUNE SYSTEM AGAIN!!  My most recent course of chemo ended about a week ago, The chemo did a spectacular job killing off the majority of the fast growing cells that compose our immune systems (the hope is that the chemo is also killing off the fast growing cancer cells), and for the past week I've had a pretty low white blood cell count.

I was told yesterday that my white cell count was within normally accepted ranges.

For me, right now, I'll take pretty much anything within normal.

I'm probably not going to go out and enjoy my favorite taco cart any time soon, and I'll probably be pretty militant about hand washing and coming into contact with obviously sick individuals, but I hope that at least for a few days, I'll be able to have a little more face to face interaction.

Getting closer to normal.