Heading Home Only Gets You to Second Base

“If you start to take Vienna – take Vienna!!”

Napoleon Bonaparte – on keeping focused on a goal, applying overwhelming force, and not getting distracted.

 

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Please check out my formal journal at CURE Magazine, a world wide publication found in every oncologist's office. They have asked me to share my transplant experience. I also encourage you to read this post: How My Cancer Might Save Your Life. It's a quick read, and if you pay close attention, you'll be a different person afterwards. 100% guaranteed, or triple your money back.

April 25, 2015 - Transplant Day +65

Today I'm at home for my third weekend in a row. These weekend passes are the best medicine ever. Barring any issues, when we go back Sunday it will be to finish the week at Hope Lodge, and then home for good! I meet with the doctor every Thursday afternoon, and last week he re-affirmed that next Thursday, April 30 should be my last day as a permanent resident of Moffitt. That's about 20 days ahead of schedule. He tells me I'm a boring patient. Nothing to do to me, nothing to say. I'm completely OK with that.

I've had a bit of a problem with minor skin rashes the last two weeks. After several calls to the clinic, and a couple of checkups, there is a split decision. The Fellow (M.D. in training for specialization as a bone marrow transplant doctor) thinks that even though it doesn't itch, and isn't red, it is caused by mild Graft vs Host disease. The main doctor, isn't really sure and isn't worried about it, as long as over the counter hydrocortisone fixes it.

This week one of the families sharing our Hope Lodge kitchen invited everyone for lasagna. Everyone kicked in a side dish, and we had quite a nice meal together. There are six tables in our dining area, and we all talk together whenever families are eating at the same time, but for this meal we shoved them all together. It made a huge difference in the social dynamic. As we sat there, chatting after a very good dinner, I was struck by how unbiased cancer is. We had people from Columbia, Nicaragua (of Indian heritage), a Jewish family from Miami with Eastern European heritage, and a couple of average Caucasian  types like me. Some seemed fairly wealthy, some blue collar. Ages varied from 20 to 67, about half men and half women. Our donors are from Germany, Columbia, and India. Everyone in the room had a different type of cancer.

It turns out that no matter what racial and social divisions exist in our country, cancer just doesn't care. And in the waiting rooms, and out patient facilities, where there is lots of time to get to chat with other people, nothing matters except the cancer. Prejudice and bias are zero based by the deadly and disabling nature of the illness.

As Sandy and I enter our last week (fingers crossed) in Tampa, we're scrambling to finish up activities we'd planned, places to visit, restaurants to eat at. When we packed to come home this weekend, we filled the car with more than half the stuff we'd accumulated in our suite. It seemed like we did it all in one trip, moving from the hospital to Hope Lodge, but somehow between store trips, visits from the kids bringing over items I'd forgotten, and just growth of junk, we've got about three times a much to bring back as we took in. First world problem, moving our excess of material goods from one home to another!

The routine after I come home is a couple of weekly visits back to Moffitt. One of those trips I get evaluated to see if they will OK me to drive again. Then the third week of May a major day of CT scan, pulmonary function test, eye exam (another test of graft vs host disease), labs, immunizations, and a doctor visit. Two weeks later I'm back for another doctor visit and a bone marrow biopsy.

In theory, I'm supposed to be out of work for at least 90 days after the first 90 day period. In practice, it depends on a lot of things, like how well I'm doing. I'll have to be careful of infections for a long time, actually several years, so somehow the balance between caution and living a fairly normal life has to be struck.

We continue to be overwhelmed by the level of support we're receiving from family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I don't want to detail everything here, but know that we appreciate every communication, favor, and donation we've gotten.

In other news, based on visibility from my Cure blog, I got an assignment from them to do a fairly major article in an upcoming print issue. In the process I've gotten to know another patient whose approach to cancer is a lot like my own. T.J. Sharpe is fighting melanoma, and has an excellent blog (not just for melanoma patients) at Patient #1 which I highly recommend.

I am praying daily for members of my work team that have cancer, have spouses with cancer, or are in the hospital for other reasons. I can tell you from direct experience it matters.