Stem Cell Transplant Here I Come – Part Three

Made it through the outpatient procedures: Cytoxan, 21 shots of Neupogen (over 13 days), Hickman placement surgery, class on caring for Hickman, class on general transplant details, 2 shots of Mozabil and 13 total hours at the Apheresis getting almost 6 million stem cells.  Came close to needing a transfusion due to low hemoglobin but it was on the cusp and decision was to send me home if I promised to eat lots of meat, take iron supplements and rest.  Happy?  Oh yeah …home three whole days earlier than they told me to expect.  And our son is able to come next week for a short visit…hooray!

Next comes admittance on 6/29 with the high-dose chemo starting on 6/30 and my new birthday sometime in 2^nd week of July.  This is an autologous transplant, thus easier on the body than allogeneic, nevertheless it’s a bit of an effort for me not to focus on words like “kill off all your bone marrow and most of your immune system”.   I am choosing to remember that I am a cancer butt kicker (after 500+ hours of R-Epoch in 2011) followed by 4 years of remission.  Wish it could have been 10 years but that isn’t the script to this particular movie.  I’m not invincible but I am strong and with a ferocious determination to enjoy this movie for as long as is humanly possible.  Thus, as PoGuy and Max and so many others have said (in so many words), “you might as well embrace it and show yourself to be resilient, enduring, fierce and unstoppable.”   I benefit from that attitude and so do the loved ones around me.

Paella