Vacation, indeed

I apologize for the long blog silence.  It had nothing to do with my waiting to find out if I had a brain tumor this time, you'll be happy to know.  At least I hope you'd be happy to know that.  The truth of the matter is that we've been really busy.  With my immune system kicked up a notch, and a 4-day break from clinic visits, and with what might be the last sunny warm days we ever see here, we have been all over our little corner of Seattle for a few days.  Aquarium, zoo, the strangely interesting Ballard Locks, a fish hatchery (the Chinook salmon are spawning.  Luna swears they are sharks; she refuses to call them salmon), some random drives around town, going up in the Space Needle...that sort of stuff.  Been walking a lot and getting lots of exercise.  Seattle is a be-yoo-ti-ful city, and it seems like everywhere you go there are a lot of windows to gaze out of.  Especially this apartment.  So I also have been doing a lot of that: gazing out windows at Seattle.

Luna gazes a lot, too.

Getting ready to go to the park.

From our balcony

Agua Verde with Rosa and Jen (Hipstamatic iPhone app pic- fun!)

Chinook salmon in a fish ladder.  Luna being where she shouldn't.

We are also rediscovering cable TV, so I spent the last few nights watching Hoarders, Ghost Hunters, and Project Runway.  I'd like to say I've been doing more spiritual, meaningful preparation, but basking in relative normalcy (or base mediocrity perhaps) is the most enjoyable thing I've done in 6 months.  I even have normal-ish hair for the moment.  It doesn't look like my old hair though, it's kind of lighter brown with just a tiny bit of curl.  It's sort of 80's Jamie Lee Curtis.  But, it will all fall out again soon so it will be awhile until I finally find out what it is going to look like.

Hi.

Luna and I at the hatchery

Speaking of hair loss and what-all, here's what's been going on, medically-speaking.  First, I had my intra-thecal chemo injection last week (chemo into my head port).  For those of you who remember how that used to be for me (where I was a retching, quivering mess for 2 hours during and after the injection, then I would sleep for 5 hours), this one was totally different.  I took my meds, walked in, had the injection in a matter of minutes, and walked out.  It was a slightly different chemo formulation, but man!  I have had a few headaches and backaches from inflammation of the tissues which is normal, but the good doc has me on some steroids that help.  They also cause my white blood cell counts to shoot to the moon: WBC are 10 and ANC is 9800 or something!  So I'm temporarily super-immune (the docs say it doesn't exactly work that way, but what do they know).

I had my data review session with my team of doctors yesterday, and we went over the findings of all my tests.  Fine, fine and fine was the gist of it.  I'm scheduled to start pre-transplant conditioning chemo on Tuesday.  I will have 3 days of chemo, a day of rest, then 4 days of total body irradiation (TBI, 2 20-minute sessions a day), then I'll receive my new cells on September 22.  Things will get fairly physically challenging from there as my counts drop and I fall apart until the new cells take over, so I might be passing the keys to the blog to Brett occasionally to keep you updated when I am lying around drugged up and feeling sorry for myself.  Today, I had surgery to have my new Hickman port put in by a very nice doctor that has the same birthday as I do.  This port is in my chest and is wider than my old PICC line (that was in my arm) in order to accommodate the more viscous stem cells.  It's also supposed to be less susceptible to infection and in general, easier to take care of.

The Hickman line...the coils are on the outside for access, the part between lower ribs and clavicle run under my skin and my skin is sealed to the catheter at the top, and the near the clavicle past the seal, the catheter is inserted into my jugular vein where it feeds down into my superior vena cava.  If that's confusing, look it up on Wikipedia or something.

But right now it hurts.  Its been so long since I've had a procedure that hurts that I almost forgot what it's like.  So I'm feeling a little unprepared for what is to come, which I recall from my induction involved quite a bit of this "hurting" thing.  Although for now I am also strangely calm. Most likely that is from the boatloads of good thoughts I've been receiving from the amazing people I've managed to surround myself with over the years.  Thank you so much!!   I'm looking forward to some more visits from friends and family soon, and just moving forward finally!

I will be in touch soon (especially if nothing is on TV- ha).  Have a great weekend everybody.  Sending lots of love to all,
jess