Nick Asoian’s Recovery

Beaver Creek snow cats in a snowstorm

Happy Holidays everyone! I am back home in Vail now and I have started my new job as a snow cat operator at Beaver Creek. It's pretty fun but much more difficult than it looks so make sure to hold your criticism about the grooming next time you go skiing. It is really pretty to be out on the mountain late at night and even better when it's snowing! My blood counts continue to go up and just yesterday I had my Apheresis catheter removed from my chest. This was an external catheter that was used to remove my blood and harvest the stem cells from it for the transplant. Needless to say it is nice not to have anymore tubes hanging out of my body! I have my next PET scan in a couple of weeks to check and make sure that the transplant and all of the treatment just before took care of everything. However, no matter what the results of the PET scan are I still have to do three weeks of radiation for 15 minutes a day five days a week. This will be focused only on the spots that were cancerous. The side effects will be much less than the total body radiation but still I will have to see how it goes. Hopefully after that I will be done will all treatments forever! Well I hope you all have a great holiday season and think snow! Nick