Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to Me!

It's June! Is a month that has always signaled good things for me, starting with my birthday. And since 2000, Father's Day has been a part of that, too. Well, Father's Day is always the third Sunday of the month, and my birthday is always in the last week of the month, so why be excited about them, or even mention them, this early? Well, I'll get to that.

Last I wrote, I was in the middle of four days of preparative chemotherapy for my transplant. The remainder went well, with the exception of the fact that it was always super early in the morning. I didn't care much for that, but got through it. Monday and Tuesday were "rest" days from the chemo and before my transplant, but they were days for the infusion of another drug, called ATG. I don't remember what it stands for, but it's purpose is to ensure that my body wouldn't reject my donor's stem cells. Those two days went ok. I was really nervous about them because a number of patients end up in the ICU from the ATG. It was also the only thing about this transplant that differed a bit from the first one. But, I made it through just fine. On the two ATG days, I was given Benadryl to ward against an allergic reaction. It made me incredibly, incredibly drowsy, and (Noelle says) very funny to talk with. 

Tuesday evening I had a cool surprise. Kanani and Matt Oblad - old BYUH friends who live in Visalia, CA - popped in to see me. They're in town for some baptisms in their families, and had some time Tuesday evening to come in and cheer me up. They stayed for about an hour and it was so great to hang out with them. I'm so glad they carved out some time to see me.

Matt and Kanani and I...

Wednesday was my NEW new birthday. June 28th has always been my birthday, but when you receive a marrow or stem cell transplant, the date of the transplant becomes a new birthday. I've had two transplants, so now, I have three birthdays. Pretty cool, eh? Here are some pictures from my NEW new birthday.

The Package the cells arrived in...

The people who delivered them to me...

Me, signing my life away to get the cells...

My mom came for nine days to help with the kids while Noelle visited me during the day every day. She also spent both of her Saturdays with me here in the hospital. It's been really hard for her to be so far away and to feel so helpless. Now that she's met some of the staff helping me and caring for me, she feels much better.

Here's a picture of Mom and I from her visit...

Thursday through today has been all about monitoring my body's systems and ensuring that everything is running smoothly. This morning, my red blood cell count dropped below the threshold they have established for anemia for patients in my situation, so I received one unit of red blood cells in order to bring me back above that threshold. We'll see how my numbers look tomorrow. It's   par for the course to need transfusions when waiting for one's stem cells to engraft and begin to produce blood cells on its own. Last time I received 2 units of red cells and 2 units of platelets.

Here are my red cells going into me this morning...

Well, I need to take a nap. More later...