February 28, 2013

DAY -1

It is  quite late in the day as I post this so most of you may read it with “tomorrow” actually being today to you.

 

Tomorrow is DAY ZERO, my new birthday. At give or take 11AM I get the bone marrow transplant from my Sister Donor. It is my last day with my own blood.  Tomorrow I become a chimera.  I will have different DNA in my blood cells than the DNA in the rest of the cells in my body.  I would love to say that I will now have a second career as an unstoppable killer for hire but I am afraid that it actually means you could kill me, dispose of my body, and based on the blood they wouldn’t even look for me.  They would look for the body of my Sister Donor.   Hopefully my sister would fill them in, after all she gave me the blood cells ………………...This couldn’t be some incredibly inscrutable murder scheme could it?  Nahh.

As I posted yesterday I am feeling much better. I am certain that we chose the right place for the transplant. I have adjusted to life on the BMT Unit.  I sleep well considering how often they have to wake you. The food here is as a matter of fact quite good and I have no dietary restrictions.  I'd love a good gin and tonic but that’s going to have to wait another year or so.  I shower every day.  My room is nice.  It is large and has a good view.  I get my mile walk in almost every day, with Pauline when she is here and with my ever present IV pole in tow in any case.  That thing is without question the worst part of being in the hospital.  They have drugs for everything else but there is no cure for the pole.

I learned from Robin Roberts that she named her constant companion.  In her case she used her “stripper name”.  Based on all the rules of stripper naming I ever heard  I’ve never had a good stripper.  So without further ado meet Mark.

 

I know a Mark R., a Mark W., a Mark C., a Mark H., two Mark P’s and two Mark B’s.  This is Mark O.  (Insert obligatory joke here).  Sometimes I feel like Chuck Noland, the guy in Cast Away because I find myself talking to him, uh, it.  “Get off my foot your son-of-a-bitch !”  

If you look closely at the photo you may be able to make out the cord tied to Mark’s base    I despise pushing him around the place so I made him this leash. Now I can drag his sorry butt behind me.  My friend Gale is going to make me a nice handle for it. To tell the truth I think Mark kind of likes it.  Aside from being a pain in the ass he may be something of a masochist.

It’s funny, odd, stupid, ignorant, honestly I’m not sure what but I am really doing OK, at least most of the time. All of the folks here at the hospital are great.  Well except for one lady who seems to be in a bad mood every time I see her but thankfully that is a rare occurrence.  Everybody I know has been incredibly supportive.  I couldn’t ask for any more help from the office.  Heck even the folks at the insurance company (speaking of the office) have been very helpful and supportive.  I have come to the conclusion that this, and probably other diseases that have a similar progression and prognosis, are harder on the close family than the person with the disease.  I know that is true in my case.  That truly is hard to deal with.

Well, I thought when I started that this would be a really long post but there’s not much left to say.  It’s late.  I probably should sleep.  My first real side effect has begun, diarrhea, oh joy.  I don’t have to run to the toilet because I have the colostomy bag left over from the intestinal surgery.  That does, however, lead to another issue.  Colostomy bags are only so big.  Diarrhea, as other bag wears know, is fast and more, shall we say, sneaky.  That combination leads to the possibility of rolling over in your sleep onto a balloon filled with something more than hot air.  The possibility of the balloon popping may not be likely but I bet I sleep lightly.  I damn sure ain’t taking a sleeping pill.

Thanks for reading.  Thanks ever so much more so for the comments.

Boone

 

P.S.

If you make money selling that murder plot then you owe me a cut.