Hard Time Starts Tomorrow!

I went in on Tuesday to have my stem cells harvested. The nurse told me I was an overachiever when she got my blood counts back because my white blood cell count was 79,500 (range for a normal person not receiving G-CSF shots is 4,000-11,000) which meant it was even too high for them to give me the shot they were supposed to that day. I was hooked up to the pheresis machine for about 4 hours and they ended up with 8.7 million cells, which is way over the goal of 2-5 million stem cells. I was thrilled they got enough so that I didn't have to stay and do another day of collection. I was finally able to go home. I felt like I had been gone forever.

Me with my stem cells! You can see the tubes by my arm running the blood to and from the machine.

It was so fun to see the kids faces when I got home. Pearl was hesitant to come to me for a second, but then came and gave me the biggest longest hug I have ever seen her give. She then did a little stompy happy dance all around the living room when I put her down. This was a new dance I hadn't seen yet, but it was a good one! She kept coming back and making me pick her up. She was not letting me out of her sight. Henry was so excited too and gave me a huge hug and kiss right away. He had been asking me if I would show him some frogs when I got home every time I talked to him on the phone and I was glad he didn't start right in with that because I don't know where he got that and I had no frogs to show him. Of course I missed Brooke most of all. I hate being away and not being there to help take care of everyone. I am seriously dreading being gone for close to a month.

We are a little crazy and decided the 2weeks before I go in to do my transplant would be a perfect time to get our house ready and put it back on the market. I mean, it's not like there is much else going on, right? So, Wednesday we had a stager/interior designer come in to help stage the house in hopes it will help is sell more quickly. That was interesting. She did a great job, but we ended up moving almost every piece of furniture in the house. Some pieces several times. I also had to put together two tables (one that had a million pieces) and some chairs. All of this was done in an 80 degree house because it was about 100 degrees outside and the air was not keeping up so well. Oh, did I mention that I wasn't supposed to lift more than 5lbs. with my right arm because of the venous catheter. We met with our realtor at 4 and went over all the paperwork etc. Then finished cleaning up the wreck we had made of the house and moving the furniture we wouldn't be using into the garage.

By the time the kids were in bed at 8:30 I was a sweaty, and apparently bloody, mess. I had been bleeding from the catheter site and my badages were filled with blood that was now beginning to leak out. Since it has to be a sterile dressing to keep from infection I was not able to just change the dressing myself at home. So I would have to go to the hospital to have it done. Luckily, I still know most of the nurses up on the Oncology floor and was able to call and have one of them agree to let me come up and change the dressing without having to check in or anything. That probably saved me about 4 hrs sitting in the ER. There are definitely perks to being in the medical field. I guess this kind of stuff is why they say doctors are the worst patients.  

The next day was not much better since the realtor was coming to take pictures. We had to restore the house to perfect condition (a losing battle with children), and I still had to mow the lawn. Luckily, after that things slowed down a bit and we were able to relax and just enjoy being together. Friday morning I took Henry to the snake museum thing at MU and he just loved it. He is so obsessed with snakes now and makes me tell him all of the snake stories I have (which is surprisingly many) before bed at night. Saturday we had our first showing on the house and are still waiting to hear back. I feel so bad for Brooke having to try and keep the house show ready while taking care of our 2 crazy children while I'm gone. At least my Mom will be able to come help her after this week so she can switch places being here and visiting me. Thanks to our friend Leah, who came and watched the kids, we were actually able to go out to dinner Saturday night. Something we have not done in a very long time!

I am not the type of person who does well inside all of the time and especially not confined to a room. I used to tell Brooke all the time that I'm like a dog; for me to be my best self I just have to get out and run sometimes (be it playing Bball, football, fishing, whatever). The moral of the story is the next 3wks to a month are going to SUCK! I am ready for it to be over though. Well, I can do anything once. Hopefully I won't ever have to do it again. This is my last night of freedom. Who knows if I will get any sleep tonight. Tomorrow I start my sentence.