Dear Side Effects,

Dear Side Effects,

Please stop!!  You have been hammering me for almost a year, trying to wear me down, tear me down or bring me down.  For so many months, you would hit me with something new every week.  Remember the severe finger cramping, then a bad headache for days, then the shaking chills followed by the fever, then terrible GI symptoms, then pain in the kidney and on and on and on?  You would add a new ailment just as I was getting used to the previous one.  They overlapped, sometimes with two, three or even four symptoms going on at the same time.

Even though you have slowed your pace with a new side effect about every two weeks, it's still annoying and I'm done with it.  The latest attack of making me cough every two minutes and preventing communication with my students may be the final straw.  I've learned a lot about fighting GVHD and various illnesses caused by drugs.  From now on, I'm going to use that knowledge to beat you every time you show yourself.  I'm not going to wait for the usual two to three weeks for an official okay from the doctors in Seattle.  I have always waited before but they would just end up giving me the treatment that I already knew would fix the problem.  I haven't been wrong regarding treatment, not even once. 

I know the cough was caused by GVHD so I've increased the steroid, Prednisone and now the cough is gone.  I should have done so a week ago.  The doctors in Seattle are still talking about it and want me to do two more weeks of testing before they will believe it's GVHD.   So give up, it's not working.  I'll just put out any fire that you start and keep smiling.

Mike