Let the Games Begin!

It has begun. I drove to St. Louis Wednesday for my pre-transplant appointment and everything went smoothly. It was good to have a few more of my questions answered. As I said before there is a 50-60% of cure after a transplant in my situation. If I am going to relapse it will most likely be within the first year or two. The doc said if I make it past the 2 year mark there is about a 95% chance that I will never relapse. That was very reassuring. Now I just need to make sure I make it to the 2 year mark with no relapse! It also sounds like this whole transplant deal is going to be even more fun than I thought. My taste will probably be gone/messed up for at least a month, maybe longer. Patients typically lose up to 10% of their body weight from diarrhea, lack of appetite, and nausea/vomiting.(I plan on taking a before and after picture.) Sounds like I will lose ALL of my hair again and it will probably be gone for about 3 months. I don't mind losing my hair except my eyebrows and eyelashes, people without eyebrows and eyelashes just look freaky!

Friday I started my growth-colony stimulating factor (Neupogen) shots and had my central line (Hickman tri-fusion catheter) put in. I am staying with my brother Brian and his family here in St. Louis. I drive over to Wash U every morning and get a shot in my belly or arm and then I go back and hang out with them. I have not had many symptoms from the shots other than some bone pain in my hips/lower back.

Brooke and the kids stayed at home (to get the house ready to put back on the market) and it has already been really hard being away from them the last couple of days. This next month is going to be rough! Though all of this has been a terrible experience I know that it will end up making me a better, stronger, more compassionate person. I hope that will equate to being a better husband, father, and doctor. One thing that has been nice about all of this is the time I have been able to spend at home with my wife and kids. Although I feel terrible and am not able to do much when I'm going through chemo it has still been great to be there when my kids wake up in the morning and when they go to bed at night. Had I started residency at the end of June I would not have had this time to spend watching my little ones grow up so fast. I feel lucky that I've had this time when they are so little and so fun to spend getting closer to them. They are everything to me.

After one of my rounds of chemo in late June I was laying on the couch feeling terrible. I did not want to move. I did not even want to talk. My sweet little Pearl grabbed a book, toddled over to where I was, and then gave me the book and signed "book". She looked at me with her deep blue eyes, smiled and said "Da Da", then signed "book" again. My pain, my discomfort, my fatigue was swept away. When I first saw her grab the book I thought "nope, not right now", but there was no way I could say no to her. I scooped her up, layed her on my chest, and proceeded to read her the book. I could have lived forever in that moment. It is very hard for me to convey the emotions I felt or the beauty of that simple smile and the feeling of my little girl lying on my chest. Experiences like these are precious gems that shine through so much darkness and are most definitely tender mercies from God. It just makes me realize the importance of living in the moment and not always waiting to be done with this stage of life or treatment or whatever it may be. It is so easy to get caught up in looking forward to what is to come that we don't see and enjoy the wonderful things that are happening in our lives right now. I hope to be better able to be present and more observant of the beautiful things and people present in my life each day. These are moments and realizations that I may have never experienced had my cancer not relapsed. Dark clouds always have a silver lining.