R&R

I have tomorrow off. I do not have to go to Sloan Kettering and get my blood tested. I'm so excited just to hang around the house. Do some yoga. Read my book. Do my nails. Right now I can hear the crickets and their song is amazing. They're like ear perfume. Sort of like a hearing version of eye candy.

I read today the full report of what the clinical trial Dr. Giralt wants me to join. The hardest part to read is as always, the likely, less likely and rare side effects from the chemotherapy drugs. It's always a nasty list.  Of course, I'll so whatever Dr. Giralt suggests. It's not an issue for me at all. My only question is, will I get the higher dosage or lower dosage of Chlofarabine?  I'll see him next Thursday. I'll ask.

I was relieved to hear Robin Roberts from Good Morning America is using Dr. Giralt too for her transplant. When I first looked her up, I didn't see her as using him or being at Sloan Kettering and I was thinking, "What? Where else could she possibly be going?" Then it came out in the news yesterday that she is going to be at Sloan. There's no doubt they're the best and that I am very lucky. Maybe it will be a star-studded transplant floor while I'm there? Party!

Glad, Bewildered, Nervous. Calm

I met with Dr. Giralt today. I now have an official start date of September 13th and a date to receive the cells on September 20th. My donor is ready to go and I found out that it's a woman, she's 31 and she's never been pregnant.  The never been pregnant part might seem random but it's relevant in the transplant world. Pregnancy creates certain antibodies in a woman's body that can allow or not allow a pregnancy.  These antibodies always remain in you and can play into any problems of rejection during a stem-cell transplant.  Not having to deal with those anti-bodies is just better. 

Dr. Giralt wants me to be part of a study. He gave me a tome to read which I started today before I sign anything. It's testing levels of safety when adding a third drug to the chemotherapy regime before transplant. I'll read it, and I'm sure I'll have a bunch of questions for him. He did tell me that it's a hard hit of chemo, and that he wants to hit me hard. They keep calling me "young and robust" and I keep showing them questioning sideways glances.  

Usually, this course of chemo keeps you in the hospital 4-6 weeks rather than the typical 3.5 for a transplant. It seems you get a litter sicker, so you just have to stay longer to recover. So, I was on a real high (well a well-tempered high) when they told me the donor is a go and the agency set a date. But then after learning his planned course of action, I just got freaked out. Maybe it won't be harder than anything I've done already. Or maybe it will be... 

A nurse told me today that most people just block out the in-patient experience entirely. They say you sleep a lot and spend a lot of time pressing the morphine button. What a mess. But, I know, I will begin to heal. I can feel myself beginning to heal from this last round of chemo and I have two weeks now to focus on becoming more robust and younger (wink wink). I'll do my best,

I'm bewildered because I don't know when I'll see the kids. I swear I think it's a kind of shock. They're slated to come October but I'll be in the hospital and the nurse today seemed pretty adamant that no children are allowed on the 8th floor. It's the transplant floor and it's too risky. So then I don't see them until November? It's just been five days and I'm already wilting.  I FaceTime with them but all I want is to hold them. I'm sure all they want is to be held.  After this is over with, everyone will surely understand what a long-term goal is...

I talked with a guy in the waiting room today who had a transplant nine months ago. He seemed really good. He was of mixed ethnicity so his cells had to come from cord blood. Frozen umbilical cords. They look for 6 markers to match and he had a 4 out of 6 match.  He seemed good. He said he did not have too much Graft vrs Host Disease. But he did have some of the longest eyelashes I've ever seen! They were spilling over his face mask.  Unfortunately, I don't think that's a side effect of transplant.

The hospital was backed up today, and I needed a blood transfusion. In all, it was about a three hour wait and then two hours to receive the blood.  So I ran off to the movies in the middle of the day and saw "The Beast of the Southern Wild".  An allegorical story about a community of people who lived on the other side of the levees in New Orleans during Katrina. It's a story about how they weathered life.  How life makes you tough and strong enough to face your biggest fears while love keeps you going. Seemed fitting.

I was so glad to get out of the city today. It was tiring. I was afraid I'd fall asleep on the train and miss my stop. I kept having these commuter half-dreams.  And then I'd open my eyes and see the full moon out the window. When I got to my stop I took a cab to the house and opened the windows in the back and there was the most glorious and sweet smelling wind, completely enveloping me. I understand why dogs hang their heads outside the car window.  It's kind of like sailing. There's nothing else, only the wind. 

Still Waiting Again

  
I consider myself a patient patient, but this takes the knish. Speaking of knishes...I forget how great they are! With mustard. Yet, another advantage of being in New York. And yet another thing for me to eat while I'm waiting.

I'm waiting for my neutrophils to come back again as my blood flucuates. A CBC (Complete Blood Count) is a snapshot of a moving target, but it's what doctors have to go on. So, today it looks good. They gave me the shot of Neupogen yesterday to boost my neutraphils and it worked. Plus my Leukemic blast counts also went down to 3%.  That's very good too. Tomorrow I meet with Dr. Giralt and then Marty.  Maybe they will have more information on the donor, the donor agency, any dates, etc.

Every few months the song "Crosseyed and Painless" by the Talking Heads comes back into my head and just gets stuck there. It's the one with the refrain that goes, "Still Waiting..."  Talking Heads were one of my favorite things about the 80's.  Luckily it's a great song, and not something like,  "It's a Small World After All". That song really gets stuck in your head!  I'm sorry for evening mentioning it!

Lost my shape/Trying to act casual/Can't stop
I might end up in the hospital/Changing my shape
I feel like an accident
They're back/To explain their experience

Isn't it weird?/Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away
That was their policy

I'm ready to leave
I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost/Yeah, facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there/No information left of any kind
Lifting my head/Looking for the danger signs

There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us

I'm still waiting, I'm still waiting

The feeling returns/Whenever we close our eyes
Lifting my head/Looking around inside

The island of doubt/It's like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight/Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list/Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right/Facts are useful in emergencies

The feeling returns/Whenever we close our eyes
Lifting my head/Looking around inside

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things

I'm still waiting, I'm still waiting

--- David Byrne

Grouchy Girl

I am so sick of sick. I don't even feel sick! But I've been going to Sloan everyday to get my blood drawn. They look so carefully at the numbers, it's driving me crazy.  They say things like, "This is how your disease behaves".  My disease? Yuck. No thanks. It's not mine. It's a disease. But it's not like I can take responsibilty for it.  It's not as if my dog pooped on the neighbors lawn. "Your dog! You should control your dog..."  That actually is true. I should control my dog. And I can also control the way I behave. But, that's about it. 

Right now I feel like punching something because my "numbers" are so low, I'm at risk for infection again and so I have to totally lay low.  No going to visit Arpinè and Andrew at the beach because it's too far from the hospital. No sitting in the sun cause I'll fry up from the antibiotics I'm on.  I'm starting to feel like John Travolta again. All I do is commute to Sloan Kettering everyday. I'm a medical commuter. Yuck!  I'm going a bit batty. 

My kids start school tomorrow and I'm here and they're there  and it's just so wrong!  I wish them a great day full of good suprises, while I'm here having positive thoughts and negative thoughts, positive thoughts and negative thoughts.  "I'm a healthy person! No, I'm not...   There's nothing wrong with me! Yes, there is..."   Swirling around and around.  I can't even stand the subject anymore. What even is the subject?

What I need is to just stop thinking. I did that for a while and it really helped.  I'm going to do that again.  I tried some retail therapy today but it didn't have it's typical mesmerizing effect. Maybe I should try retail therapy without thinking.  That could be pleasurable... But I did buy a cute new yoga mat today and I look forward to christening that baby tomorrow.  I'm just too grouchy today. 

Minna

I've been thinking about my grandparents, Minna and Lou. My mother had a terrible relationship with them. My parents portrayed them as villans and as the reason for every single one of my mothers problems. To this day I still can't figure this out. True? Not true? All I know is that my first cousins were really close with my grandparents and my sister and I weren't because we weren't allowed to be. 

I remember going to Florida and the terrible fights that would ensue between my parents and them.  My mother loved fighting. Living in the Boxing Ring of Life made her feel alive, but, this was no way to live.

Minna popped into my head the other day when I was in the car with Andy and the kids going to the airport to drop them off. I was sitting in the back next to Ari, and I couldn't stop kissing his arms and hands and smiling at him with glassy eyes. I wasn't sure exactly when I'd see him again. I think maybe he thought I was a little crazy, just like I thought my grandmother was crazy when I was six and she'd kiss my arms and hands on the way to the airport. She'd have glassy eyes under blue eye shadow, and she'd give me butterfly kisses with her eyelashes.

I realized Saturday how she felt all those years ago. She wasn't crazy. She just wasn't sure when she was going to see me again. She was smitten and attached and there was all this noise around our relationship that made it so hard to have one. 

I remember how her cardigan would sit on her shoulders when the air conditioning in the car was too much for her.  Her tears would fall and immediately absorb into her sleeve as she looked out the window.  I understand now about wanting to get a few more strokes of that soft baby skin and a few more kisses of those hands that are now just losing their baby pudge. I realize how much she loved me.

Starry-Eyed for My Guys

The guys are heading back to London right now. Hopefully they're peacefully snoozing and won't be too wrecked for school on Wednesday.  It's so hard to adjust timewise going in that direction. And as much as I wish they could come see me every three weeks, the wear and tear on them, and the cost of flights obviously makes that impossible.

This last time away from them was three weeks and I felt like I was going to crack in half. I couldn't handle not seeing them for another second. Then they came, and my entire world went from night to day. This time, I won't see them until maybe October 6th! That is a long long time. It will be after the transplant.  It feels so foreign and abstract.

Right now, because I'm so thrilled with having seen them, I feel very motivated. Nose to the grindstone.  Plow through this transplant. Get through it. Get through the tough parts. Reboot and get home. As far as this last round of chemotherapy goes, my blast counts are down to 4-6%. This is good. They have to stay there. This was the part that made me so upset about the date of the transplant being pushed out further. It's seven days more that these counts need to stay down and this freakin' disease is nasty and obnoxious. Kicking it's ass is a real pain in the ass... As Dr. Giralt said, "All the stars need to align".

So toinght I'm just going to go to bed, my head on Isaac's pillow because it smells like him, and just be thankful for all my blessings and knowing that the stars will align for me, for my kids, my family.
Sweet Dreams
Dina

Human Body Rattled Mind

I've been ignoring writing. It's not good. Writing all this down helps me to remember things and process stuff. I explain stuff to myself to make sure I'm understanding what's going on. I know right now that I feel so much better after leaving the hospital. It's astounding how much more human I physically feel today than I did on Monday before I left. People ask me how I was feeling and the only word I can conjure is "stunned".  

I've had that feeling. I know it wears off, but when I'm in the middle of it, it seems eternal.  I just feel so thankful yet also sorry for my body that has to endure all this insanity. In fact, today really started off as pity party. I saw Dr. Giralt today and he said, "Wow! you look great! I was expecting you to look like crap!" (I think somewhere in there was a compliment?)

Dr. Giralt informed us today that the donor agency can not do the week he was hoping to book. The transplant will be the following week. So, that means something like, preparing for transplant starting Sept 13th and then getting the cells some time the week of the 17th.  He's also having them work up the FOURTH donor just in case something goes wonky with Number 3! Of course all this completely freaked me out. I cried hard. All these detours on the path of getting a transplant has me so unnerved. I just don't want to know anything that's off schedule, any change of plan, or anything. But of course life is life. Curve balls happen. A lot.

They somehow managed to completely calm me down. They handed me a little box of tissues, and were very sweet. They were happy I'm in good health (well except for leukemia I guess) and that there is even a fourth doner to work up. Just in case...

Then I saw Marty and his team. I asked him the million questions I have about transplant that I've already asked him a million times before. I just can't seem to retain the answers. "How tough is the chemo?" "How long is the hospital stay?" I know transplant is my only choice. In fact, it's not even a choice. But that doesn't mean I'm not scared.


But I did get past today, which included doing my blood work which I was really nervous about. It will tell Marty a lot about how this round of chemo went. I hope it comes out very well. Marty knows what's he's doing. 

Gathering My Things

Well, I hope to be gathering my things in a few hours. They have agreed to let me go. They are putting together all the medications I should take to stay healthy while I'm waiting for my counts to fully return.  The insurance company hopefully approves all of them. And then I can GO!

I really just want to sleep in a regular bed. They have these new fangled beds here that sporadically move the matress around in different ways.  To prevent bedsores. It has this crazy deep motor and everytime I was maybe going to fall asleep last night, the bed would grrrrrr and wake me up.  I didn't sleep a wink. Plus I even took two benedryl to try to sleep, and nothing. It's not really like me. I'm usually a good sleeper.  It was totally wired. I think it was at the idea of possibly going home today.  Also, I counted last night, they came into the room for something or other, six times, and they also moved a new roomate into this room at 3:15am.  Her roomate has spinal meningitis and is on isolation. That totally freaks me out.  Hospitals. Yuck. Gotta go!

But despite hospitals being undeniably yucky, it is my deepest wish that the next time I come into this hospital it will be for a transplant.  (Besides check-ups with Marty, out-patient).  I am optimistic and worried at the same time. I've just accepted these two things are going to have to be simultaneous and compatible.  Sergio and Marty have both spoken about how the stars must align. Many things working out at the same moment.  I'm just keeping my eyes on those cells. My body yearns for this rebooting. Can a stem-cell donor ever really comprehend what they are doing? Giving? It's so huge. 

Night Swimming

So Ari did get to go Night Swimming. While Andy took some beautiful pictures. I'm so glad Ari has this appreciation for the delicious things in life. I played him the REM song "Night Swimming" tonight and he liked it a lot.  He's got a lot of zest and is very charming. And then earlier today one of the nurses told Isaac she wanted him to be her boyfriend!  He was very gracious and smiled and played along.  Yikes! Growing up!  

Tuesday is Ari's 6th birthday. Is that little or big? It's little of course, as far as parent calculating goes. But, six among kids, is no baby anymore.  These kid are entering the world. My kids are individuals backed by a mommy and a daddy that never really felt this kind of love before. I would never take credit for the greatness of my kids. But I will, for now, take credit for not messing them up. It's actually so fun to primarily just let them be who they are... They are blessings. Every inch of their existence is a blessing. My blessings. As Dr. Giralt said, "They are your fuel".   He's right. They absolutly are. 

I am 99.9% sure I'm getting out of here tomorrow. My Absolute Neutraphil count tonight is 0.4.  You need .5 to legitimately leave.  I think I can negotiate that.  Andy says I would have been a good investment banker. Haha. If I could only successfully balance a check book! But I can strike a pretty good deal when I need to.  Maybe that's from watching him do it for so many years. He's a win/win guy and I love that about the way he does business.  He's juggling so much now.  With balance and grace. It's impressive. 

The doctors and nurses here are very focused on my numbers and tests all looking fantastic. They are the people who prepare patients for transplants and unless you're strong, they won't let you do it. Presently my numbers and labs are good. I appreciate this body, despite the whacked-out bone marrow, because at least she's strong. Really strong. I can't describe how grateful I feel when my liver counts were so high from so many medications and as they took me off or switched me to different ones, my liver responded. My bilirubin counts came down and are normal now. I know it seems weird to sit here and be writing about how grateful I am to my liver, but I am.  

It's Tough Being Tough

I want to go and be with my boys so badly. Not here. Not in a hospital. It's starting to get me down. A whole hospital filled with cancer patients. My God what a tragedy.  It's sad. All ages, races, some fit, some fat.  There's no reasons.  There are so many websites saying do this, do that, so you don't get cancer. I guess, yeah, of course, don't smoke a pack a day, but beyond that, it just seems random who gets it and who doesn't.  I have a roomate again and she just seems to be in pain, taking a lot of morphine, and it's just so sad. I haven't even been able to bring myself to ask her about her illness. I know she's a mom and has five sisters. The rest, I just can't ask anyone anymore. 

It's an arduous disease.  The diagnosis scares the hell out of you. The treatment really taxes your body.  The fears tax your mind.  I know we all like to be strong and think we're tough.  But for cancer, you have to be stronger than that still.  I look at my body, and my skin is so dry, even wth gobs of lotion. I live on antibiotics.  And I'm sure my hair will come out again, so that's always a mental and fashion challenge.  And I get exercise here by walking the halls. Fourteen times around is one mile, by the way. 

I emailed Marty today and said all I want to do is cuddle with my kids and lie on a blanket in the shade. His answer, "Have a bit more patience and you'll be rewarded in the end".  So I found a tiny bit more patience in my soul and enjoyed the guys this evening. We ordered Italian. Ari wants to know who the boss is here. So he can talk to them about the whole kid visiting problem. Maybe he can get that cleared up once and for all. 

I'm stressing that they're leaving next saturday. I don't know how I'll be. From then it's about two weeks to transplant and then four weeks in the hospital. That will be at least six weeks without seeing Ari. That's a long time. For him and for me. Isaac wants to come for the transplant. Maybe he'll come on his own and be with me. He is so brave and mature and supportive. Just a really nice person.  I'm proud of those boys and really impressed how Andy is being super Dad right now.  He invited Ari to go night swimming tonight. But my hunch is that Ari fell asleep in the car.

To Sneak In and to Sneak Out

Not only did Ari do very well sneaking in, so many nurses came by to meet the kids and get a glimpse of my little clandestine packages.  For me, just being with them is pure bliss. I so appreciate folks helping me break the rules a bit here.  They took me off isolation today, which means no more private room. But I can walk the halls and go up to the Solarium, which I did with Isaac. I couldn't wait to get outside and breathe some of that fabulous New York City air. It really was nice.

I'm so on the edge of being able to leave. My white blood cell counts are starting to return. But slowly.  I can feel that familiar "I'm hitting my wall" feeling where if I spend one more minute here I'll freak out. But they're good negotiators here, almost as good as me, and the Nurse Practitioner made me pinky swear today that I wouldn't just leave without discussing it with her.  I didn't want to pinky swear but somehow she got me to do it.  But anyway, in my mind, Monday is my absolute cut-off date. 

And there is transplant news. I spoke with Dr. Giralt yesterday.  He and Marty both agree I should recover more fully before moving on to transplant.  Dr. Giralt said that if you go into transplant with any damaged organ tissue you're setting yourself up for Graft vrs. Host Disease and that's just as bad as Leukemia.  Marty said my organs are looking very good.  So he gave me an admission date of September 7th and then the date the cells go in will be September 13th.  They both feel very optimistic and I'm just going to go with that because, well, why the hell not? 

Boys are in the hood.

So the guys landed, and they're here in NY and I'm so excited. And then I started feeling really badly.  Sort of guilt, sort of shame, sort of sadness, but not purely any of those. I guess I'm just so disappointed that this is happening in the middle of my life and that we're all so exposed to it and effected by it. 

My family is bending itself out of shape for me. They landed at 10:00am. That's 5:00 in the morning for them. They're asleep now at Tracy and Larry's and that's good.  Tomorrow they'll come see mommy and I'm in this yucky hospital. Yuck. And I know anyone would say, "They don't care. They just want to see you". But of course they care. When I was little I hated hospitals. They freaked me out. What kid wants to go to a hospital?  It's scary and not fun.

It seems the entire nursing staff is set on helping me sneak Ari in tomorrow.  There's supposed to be no kids under 11 on the floor. But I'm still in my own room and very close to the elevators. So a "sneak-in" should be pretty do-able.  I'm hoping for no glitches!

Coming Up For Air

How many days has it been?  Thank you to my Aunt Dee and Jen S. and Arpine for schlogging through this with me. How am I doing this?  Andy and the kids are flying back to New York tomorrow. They've just gotten over their jetlag and here they come again. Poor guys. It will be three weeks to the day since I've seen them. 

I've been back in a room by myself because, well, first I tested positive for a cold, and then well, came the cold.  It's important I don't get anyone else on the floor sick. And when they pulled my room mate out at 5:00am a few days ago, I knew the lab results had returned and I was Germ-Girl again.  So out the roomate went. But I've heard that she did not get the cold AND she got a private room. So, that's cool

Since here, I have had every part of me xrayed, MRIed, CAT-Scanned, EKGed, poked, listened to, blown up with water and evaluated. Head, brain, mouth, sinuses, chest, lungs, heart, abdomen, arms, legs, feet. The saline they pumped into me when I spiked the fevers, stayed in me. And until yesterday, I had 25 extra pounds of water weight on me. It was unbelievable.  I was a Michelin Man/Woman. Today I can actually see that I have a human shape and that I was actually once pretty cute looking. 

So, they are keeping me here, I guess, mainly because I have absolutley no white blood cells to fight infection. Well, that's not true, I have 0.1. And I'm proud of it. But it seems the more chemo you do, the longer it will take your bone marrow to return after treatment. I imagine come Saturday or Sunday I'll start losing my inner calm and will start making garbled and tearful cases for why I have to get out of here. Case number one being that my family will be here and I want to be with them every second. But there's a part of me that's hesitant to do anything that's not 100% Doctor Stamped for Approval.  This moment in my life is way too important.

I hear rumblings of folks talking about my transplant.  I think that the donor being unavailable for two weeks is inconvenient to the doctors. I imagine that my most ready moment might be sometime within those two weeks and the decision is, do they rush things, or do they delay things? Do the little ailments I have now (a cough, a sore in my mouth) preclude rushing things? All good questions that will of course get answered sooner than later. Marty came to visit today. He's always got the nicest things to say. Today was, "You never asked for this disease and our hope is to eradicate it for you forever".  Major Mensch as always.

I feel in a way like I'm just coming up for air.  So much happens during chemo. And at the same time, nothing happens. I get a few hours of good energy and I'm like, "I'm cool. I'm outta here", then blop, "Where's the bed?!"

Dee being here kept me in stitches.  She's funny, gorgeous, smart, kind and completely my friend and my idol. She raised four fabulous kids, has 9 amazing grandchildren, cared for my uncle so lovingly till he passed.  She's a Life Embracer. 

Jen S. spent every second of this gorgeous weekend with me in this hospital.  She brings healthy yummy food, an orchid, backrubs, and she let me cry my eyes out at the end of Across the Universe. It's such a beautiful Beatles opera movie. For sure in my top ten favorite movies.  The last song is All You Need Love, sung with such heartfelt dedication to every word.  I have an All You Need is Love button on the lapel of my down jacket (down jacket in London, you ask? Oh for sure...).  I truely believe it is all you need. (Love, of course, not the button. Or down jackets. Unless you really like those things).

The Common Cold

I had this cough that sort of came out of nowhere so they swabbed my nose and took a chest x-ray. No pneumonia. Phew. And so I didn't think about it again. Until the doctor came in. 
"I've got something to tell you. You've got the virus that carries... the Common Cold...". 
I was so relieved I almost laughed.  

I don't mean to underplay the seriousness of the cold when you're on a Leukemia floor where no one has a immune system to speak of.  So now I'm in isolation and I can't leave the room!  They wear gowns when they come in to see me. People can visit me, but I can't go walk my hallway circles or anything.  And no roommate... I'm the girl in the plastic bubble, but don't have John Travolta's hair.

Plans Are Good

Plans Are Good. But they don't always happen. It's no big deal. And as I've said before, plans that don't happen are a hell of a lot better than no plans at all. Planning is human. Planning is alive. I don't care how Buddhist you are. Plans are fun, and the idea of future, although it's an illusion, is part of what makes us human. 

Small example: the meal gifts my friends in London have been giving my family ever since I relapsed. Because they're human, my friends want to help. So they planned a calendar that quickly got filled up with loving meals we got to eat on days when stress and exhaustion made cooking seem like an impossibility.  Plus, they got to help! Which is what we do! When someone is down, we want to help. And I love that about humans! And you can't do that without planning!  Planning is useful, appreciated, fun, and wise.  So, as much as I believe that, of course, life is what's lived while in the moment, it can all happen simultaneously while making plans to help out, have fun, rest, work hard, play. All of it. 

And speaking of plans, I was supposed to leave the hospital two days ago. I was going to have some nice days away before I might be feeling sick from the chemotherapy. It was all planned. Fun times were to be spent with Arpine, Jennifer, Tracy... Movie matinees, resting in the shade, yummy food. 

But as I was realizing I hardly had it in me to pack my stuff up, I knew something was going on. If you can't pack your shit to leave the hospital, you probably shouldn't leave the hospital. Then I started getting a little fever and a pain inside my cheek and then etc., etc... I needed to stay and get this all checked out. Which was a good thing I did. They are hell bent on keeping me well during this round of chemo so that NOTHING could preclude my moving onto transplant. And I totally get that and it's totally fine with me. 

So this little infection caused a bit of pain, so they put me on Morphine (Weird drug. It's the, "I'm in pain but I'm too zonked out to tell you about it--nite nite drug). And on top of it, my blood counts have been dropping (as they should) and I've been needing transfusions.  And as we know, these they pretreat with Benedryl.  It kind of goes like this, "Good morning! You're counts are low. Here's your Benedryl. Nite Nite!"  So that's where I've been. Sleeping. Nurses come in an say, "I came in to check on this, or give you that, but you were OUT COLD!"  And since then, they've upgraded me to Dilauded. This is less of a One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest knock out pain killer and I feel MUCH more communicative.  In fact, Arpine and I took some nice twirls around the halls this afternoon.

So, to cover this infection, I'm on, two anti-biotics, one anti-viral, one anti-fungal, one pain killer. They've CAT-Scanned and scoped every inch of my face and sinuses. All while wrapping me in warm blankets, telling me I'm a trooper and working around my rigourous FaceTime schedule. 

All this said, I still do plan on gettin' out for a few days if I can. All this time is precious time. In, out, wherever. 

And just a side note, if anyone is worrying about my kids, here's their schedule-- Tomorrow: Men's Weightlifting. Sunday to the beach in Swanage. Next week, camp and tennis camp. Next weekend, men's final 200 yd dash (Usain Bolt maybe!).  A trip to Edinburgh to the Fringe Festival.  Then something Equestrian (doubtfully Ann Romeny's dressage horse) in Greenich, England. Finally, the Closing Ceremonies, a trip to Guernsy and then a trip to New York to see MOMMY! Phew! That oughta pass the time. How's that for planning?