If donating to OHSU select the “Tribute Gifts” check box, select “In Memory of”, then fill in “Alex Mills” below on the form.

Again, we can’t express how much everyone’s support has meant to Alex and our family. It is a comfort to see how much Alex is loved and appreciated. Thank you.

Donate to OHSU (select the “Tribute Gifts” check box, select “In Memory of”, then fill in “Alex Mills” below on the form.)
Register for Be The Match

People have been asking where to donate money in his name. We’re working on getting that information to all of you; we’ll have specifics in a few days.

We can’t thank everyone enough for all of the support.

We’re so grateful for the time we had with him. He will be missed.

Since all of my plugins are open-source, they are free to be forked by reputable authors in the WordPress community. It would mean a lot to have my legacy go on.

I want to thank everyone who has given me moral support through these difficult times. It has meant a lot hearing all of the love and support pour in from my friends and colleagues from around the world. I have been so grateful for all of the opportunities that have been given to me in my life, professionally and personally. Automatticians have really helped me grow professionally by giving me an amazing career for the past nine years. My car friends have helped me grow socially and provided me so many good memories and life experiences. The people that I have gotten to know in the WordPress community have been very supportive as well. I am amazed by how many friends I have made and how much they have been there for me. They all have enriched my life and helped me grow as a person.

Thank you, everyone.

Back on January 24th, I got a bone marrow biopsy in order to more accurately determine the amount of leukemia present in me. The blood test I normally get is a genetic one and trends behind the actual bone marrow. The blood test had been showing a fraction of a percent and then later 3%. That was obviously trending in the wrong direction but the hope was increasing my special medication would keep things in check. It didn’t.

The bone marrow biopsy came back at a spotty 20% (amounts varied by area). This is not good at all as it means the leukemia has morphed into yet some other form that my donor immune system is having trouble keeping in check, either due to a change or being overwhelmed.

Complicating matters is that my liver is quite inflamed, presumably due to GvHD. However my oncologist wants to be actually sure that this is the cause so I’ll be getting a liver biopsy on Wednesday to confirm. The problem with my liver being inflamed is that it excludes me from many of the potential cancer treatments that I could be getting so we need to get that under control.

If all of that wasn’t enough, I also got a Group B Strep infection in my leg from the knee down. It was and is still swollen which wasn’t entirely unusual due to all of the crap I’m going through, but it got so swollen that it was extremely painful and I couldn’t walk. I ended up having to get admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics from January 24th to the 26th. I’m still swollen, especially my ankles and feet, but I can walk without pain again thankfully. I do get incredibly winded when I exert myself, but that’s yet a whole other issue.

But back to the cancer. They aren’t quite sure what the plan is from here, be it chemotherapy or something else. Whatever it will be though, I’m along for the ride. There’s nothing I can personally do about it, so why worry about it much?

My oncologist did mention that if at any point I want to just stop treatment and make myself comfortable, that I should let them know as they won’t keep asking. I have zero intention of going that route, but it’s a scary situation to think about. It kind of makes it very real.

Day by day though. Day by day.

My liver continues to be agitated due to my donor immune system attacking it (graft-versus-host disease). As a result, I’m on steroids to suppress my immune system a bit. However as the infusion I was going to go onto makes use of my immune system to fight the cancer, steroids are counteractive to it.

It’s a balancing act of keeping the GvHD and cancer in check.

So I actually never ended up going on the infusion which was great news for me! In previous rounds, it made me feel like complete crap and that was the last thing I wanted for the holidays. Instead my oncologist increased the dose of the anti-cancer medication that I’m on in order to keep the trace amounts of cancer under control. Blood lab tests have been showing that it’s working which is good news.

All this means that I feel pretty normal, except for some weakness if my major muscles due to the steroids. I’m now in a wait-and-see mode where we keep an eye on things and react as needed to any changes.

I also had an appointment with my opthoneurologist (eye doctor) on Thursday. The good news is that my vision hasn’t really gotten worse and no further damage is being done, but the bad news is that the damage was done and it’s permanent. Things aren’t likely to get worse, but they also won’t get better.

Lots of crappy news, but it is what it is I guess. Nothing I can do about it, so not worth worrying about it much.

Thankfully I’m feeling normal-ish now and can get back to my life somewhat. I’m working and finally hanging out with friends again. Unfortunately due to my vision issues though, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be the driver on a spirited drive through the country with friends again. I’m forced to be a passenger which really sucks. The same likely goes for autocross. Hopefully one day they’ll figure out how to repair optic nerves.

The Blinatumomab did its job after two 28 day home infusions, but it made me feel absolutely horrible in the process. Extreme fatigue, nausea, and more. Thankfully pretty much as soon as I was disconnected from it, all of that went away and I’m back to my new normal. I lost a ton of muscle mass during all of this so things like stairs are still hard but I’m getting there.

Additionally I’m in the process of returning to work. My vision issues are still a huge problem however. I have to use larger text and I still haven’t driven since about April.

Still, it feels good to be back to my normal-ish self. Let’s just hope I stay this way this time!

I spent the day at home due to fatigue and just generally not feeling great due to this latest IV medication I’m on. One of my sisters was able to make it down from near Seattle though which was a cool surprise!

Here’s hoping my health issues are behind me when 35 rolls around. I certainly didn’t expect to still be dealing with this crap at this point.

My latest BCR-ABL blood test that detects my cancer’s genetic mutation came back ever so slightly positive (like 0.01%). This isn’t a relapse but rather just some pesky cancer cells that refuse to take a hint.

To treat this, I will be taking a very specialized drug called Blinatumomab. It’s administered as a continuous 28 day drip which means I’ll have to carry around a portable IV pump. I’ll then get a 2 week break before a second 28 day infusion. If I’m disconnected from the pump for more than 4 hours, I may have to start the whole 28 day cycle over again. What a pain.

This Sunday I’ll be admitted to the hospital for 3 or 4 days of monitoring to make sure that I don’t have any negative reactions to the medication.

As for my vision issues, depressingly there hasn’t really been any improvement. If anything I’ve gotten more blind spots that make it hard to see things that I’m directly looking at.

I’ve been unable to work or drive, both of which I desperately want to do. I’m having a really tough time with the thoughts of things never improving past where they are now.

My ommaya reservoir, used to access my spinal fluid for samples and chemo, clogged because of frequent use and it being installed ever so slightly in the wrong place. So on Monday, they opened my scalp back up and replaced it with a fresh reservoir. Everything went perfectly fine, or so I thought, and I went home Tuesday morning after an overnight observation stay at the hospital.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up with an absolutely horrible headache. I took some strong prescription pain killers but they didn’t help and the throbbing headache got worse. Eventually it got unbearably bad and I begged to be taken to the ER. I was the worst headache I’ve ever had and probably a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. At the hospital I was able to get some IV pain medication which is stronger and faster acting and that helped quite a bit.

They determined my headaches were being caused by meningitis which in turn was caused by a bacterial infection in my brain, almost certainly a complication of the surgery. To make treatment easier and more effective, they decided to remove the reservoir that they had just put in only a few days before. Treatment of the infection with IV antibiotics eventually cut down and stopped the headaches, but I have to continue the antibiotics at home for about another week.

It seems the complications and issues never stop for me, but unlike the vision issues, at least this one wasn’t anything permanent.

Can I be done now please?

While the blurriness has lessened significantly, from an estimated 20/400 to 20/40, I still have some quite significant vision issues. Infact I was surprised to learn that my doctor didn’t expect me to recover as well as I have — he had been quite concerned the first time he saw me.

After some research, he currently thinks that all of this was caused by an very rare side effect of an antibiotic I had been taking for over a year. It’s purpose was prevent me from catching a certain type of pneumonia due to my weakened immune system. The discovery of odd-looking white blood cells (aka probably cancer) in my spinal fluid was likely just coincidental. The antibiotic caused pressure in my optical nerves, killing off some of the cells contained within. We are born with more than we need so the hope is that things will continue to improve over as long as the upcoming year, but real damage was done and that’s permanent and disappointing.

The best way I can think of to describe my current vision is that my eyes are now using crappy data cables. The world seems lower “resolution” (I have to use bigger fonts on digital devices) and the contrast and brightness of things has gone down. I have trouble telling some similar colors apart, but that varies by day and time. I had to change the colors in my code editors and I can no longer make out the individual pixels on a screen, and that really sucks.

Additionally I currently have a blind spot sort of shaped like a C in the middle of my right eye. My brain is learning to compensate for it including switching which eye is my dominate one, but it’s unlikely that the blindspot will heal. But who knows? Maybe I’ll have some good luck to counter the previous horrendous luck that I’ve had.

So overall I guess I’m lucky that things have improved as well as they have, but the fact that things are unlikely to return to perfect like they were before is hugely crushing. At the end of the day though, being able to drive again at some point is all I really want and that isn’t looking unlikely. A huge relief!