I'm so nervous to be so far away from my family while I get a transplant. I'm considering not getting this tailormade transplant because it means I could stay here in London. Maybe in my mind, I'm making it seem worse than it will really be for everyone. For my kids. For Andy. For me.
Andy likes to call me "The Hearth". I guess he means something like the center of the home. It's such a compliment. And I just hope my kids are OK while their hearth is getting better in New York City for four months.
My friend Heidi just left this morning. She was here with us for a week. It was supposed to rain all week and we had lovely sunshine instead. The thing about Heidi is that for her, everything is life. The good, the bad. You just keep on going. There's no expectation that everything is going to be perfect, but you use your ingenuity to deal with it all. Gracefully.
She's got an upbeat attitude. She was a huge part of my embracing London. When I was so sad to leave Chicago, she always reminded me of what an adventure we were going on. And she'd remind me that nothing's permanent. "If you hate it you'll come back". Like nothing is the end of the world. And whenever we would part and I'd get teary-eyed, she'd say, "Don't worry. You can't get rid of me that easily." And thank God for that.
Well, I'm just a bundle of nerves this week. Next Monday will likely be my bone marrow biopsy. After which we'll jump on a plane to meet the doctors at Sloan Kettering and wait for the results of the biopsy. After which a ton of decisions will be made. What kind of transplant? When do I start? Do I just stay in NY and begin or will I return home first and then come back? Who will be with me? When and how do my kids come? How does Andy coordinate all this and work as well? What will my mental state be like? Will I be blessed with more waves of strength or will I be a mush? What about the dog???
I didn't realize till today how far over on the east side Sloan Kettering is! I'm not much of an east sider, but it's not far from Serendipity III. It's one of my favorite restaurants in NY because it's rife with good childhood memories for me. It's changed a lot since I was young, but you can still get a Frozen Hot Chocolate and a Ftatateeta Sandwich which is basically cream cheese on french toast with apricot jam. Yikes!
So, just to calm myself down, I realize I've done a lot of chemotherapy in my life. I haven't done transplant chemotherapy. But I've probably done close to it. I have survived so far. Gotten through things like dehydration, blacking out, super high fevers, appendicitis, fungal pneumonia... I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff because I think it's like childbirth, you just forget the bad parts and the world is overpopulated!
The other possibility is that the chemotherapy has completely scrambled my short term memory, (even though whenever I mention that anyone else they say, "No, I have that too! It's not the Chemo." Alrighty then. I guess it's true then that we all can't remember what we had for dinner last night but we can remember what we ate on prom night? (That was a Japanese steak house for me. The shrimp dish).
Today Ari has gone off to the zoo with our friend Lucie. She is a dream of a person. She has an easy laugh. Loves to help. Is logical. Rational. And so hugable too. She's our neighbor, our friend and feels like one of the family. She calls Ari, "Monkey Business" and she's so right. And I'll bet they're off visiting the monkeys right now.
Isaac's officially been at camp for one week and we get to have a 10-minute phone call with him this evening at 6:30. I remember phone calls at sleep away camp always made me homesick all over again. We're going to try to keep it cool and not say things like OMG WE MISS YOU SO MUCH COME HOME RIGHT NOW!!!! I think we can handle that?
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