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?