My Journey 9/22/10

   Let me back track a more than a week... Got a call from the infusion center at P/SL about the counts and how many stem-cells we harvested.  The doctors told me that we need a minimum of 2 million to do the transplant.  5 million is recommended and we harvested 9.4 million.  It takes 2-4 days for most people to get the recommended number of cells and I was able to do in in one sitting.  I was hooked up to that machine for 5 hours.  So I think that was great news and i didn't have to go back for another sitting.  Which was great.  I think that was the most surreal part of the process so far.  The noise was weird and watching my blood go through this machine and get processed is crazy.  Glad that I didn't have to do that again!

   Today is day six of chemo to kill off any of the white blood cells that have the lymphoma.  I have one half hour more of this of this and will get a day off on sunday, day before transplant.  Today is day -2.  it counts down that way until transplant day which is day 0.  Days after that are in +1, +2, and so on.  Its kind of like a rebirth in a sense.  I get to add another birthday in a weird way.  We'll call it my immune rebirth.  September 27th.  As the go on, I will be having a couple days of potential feeling the worst through this experience.  Due to my white cells dying and my stem-cells making new ones, I am going to guess that I am going to be feeling fatigue at its most.  Fortunately I got a spin bike to ride here in isolation and trying to get one or so hours on it a day.  The exercise is nice and motivating me to get my ass back in shape.  Which is good since being tied up to the pumps really limits my mobility.  That is going to be one of the keys on getting through this as fast as possible.  

   So day 0 approaches.  Im a bit scared.  Not about the procedure, but at this point I cant help but think of the what if's!  Confidence is high but there is just a lot to think about.  Will the grafting work?  The thoughts go through your head especially since confidence was so high after the first twelve rounds of chemo to kill it off.  Hodgkin's is a persistent bastard.  Is it cause for concern?  No!  I know im in good hands and everything that I have herd is the outcomes of this transplant are amazing.  Odds are very good!