1/17/2011 The Next Step in our Journey

We found out last week that I'm heading for Salt Lake to begin the transplant treatment. We will be leaving this week to go to Salt Lake for a couple of days of tests this Thursday and Friday to confirm that everything is where the LDS Hospital doctors want them to be, then if everything stays on schedule we'll leave next Thursday Jan 27th to begin the collection process on the 28th.

I will be out patient for the first 7 - 10 days while they give my body the medicine to stir up the stem cells out of the bones so they can harvest them using a dialisis type machine to save them to put back into me later. Then I will be admitted for about 4 weeks to get heavy duty chemotherapy to knock out everything they can get, probably won't be fun, then after that they put my stem cells that they harvested back into me and we wait for them to grow and get me feeling better. When that happens and gets to the level they want, I go out patient again but have to stay in Salt Lake close to the hospital in case of complications or problems. That should be another 2 - 3 weeks. All told they said to expect to be in Salt Lake for about 8 weeks, we've heard of people doing it in less than that, but it doesn't really matter to us.

I've made it sound pretty simple, I'm sure it's a might more involved that I've put down here, but we'll have to keep you informed. Patty might be doing some of the blogs while I'm under the heave chemo, but we'll have to see how it affects me. I was hoping to go during a little warmer time of year so that Patty wouldn't be so trapped between the hospital and the place we will be renting during our stay. My immune system will be taking a huge hit, so we have to turn into bubble boy for a few weeks, otherwise we may have tried to impose on family during our time up there. We have to get somewhere that is self contained and can't share any common areas because of health issues.

I've got a meeting this Wednesday morning, after that we'll be hitting the road to head for Salt Lake and plan on returning this Saturday, then we'll see what they say and exactly when they will schedule us for the return trip. We'll keep everyone informed as soon as we know more.

I'm glad we're moving forward, can't say I'm excited about it, more like a little nervous, but looking forward to moving things forward towards remission. I finished my last Revlimid and Lovenox this weekend and am suffering through what might be my last Dex steroid Monday night/Tuesday morning of sleep problems tonight - thus the middle of the night blog, it's still Monday night for me even though this is posting early Tuesday morning. We're enjoying some good weather here in Vegas and hope to take some of it with us so it's maybe not quite as cold up there as it has been. We know January and February are always cold but we're really not looking forward to freezing our hind ends off for the next couple of months. We'll share more later.