12 days until transplant

Tonight I am blogging from the huge Starbucks on Capitol Hill. I walked here from Ravenna, an exact 5.0 mile walk, according to Google Maps. I've been wanting to do a full 10 miles before I go into the hospital and there aren't many days left to go, so today was the day. I rode my scooter and parked it on a quiet street near Ravenna, and am looking forward to riding it when I get back to it. Hopefully I can still find it :)

Yesterday Johanna and I finished the Health Safety class and the IV Pump class at the SCCA, which were pretty informative. Actually we ducked out of the Health Safety class a quarter way through since they were running out of chairs. We had already taken the 2nd half of it earlier, but I had been under sedation earlier that day from a bone marrow biopsy and spinal tap and pretty much forgot everything that happened that afternoon, so we decided to take it again. I even went to the dentist and had fillings filled that day, and it's the first time that I can't point out which teeth were worked on, since the sedation causes a bit of amnesia. Johanna and I were the only participants in the IV pump class, and we each had pumps and a pretend Hickman line to practice on. The nurse showed us how to load the backpack with the IV bag and pump so that you could carry it around, and how to program the pump. We felt like old pros, since we had figured out a similar IV pump when I was on IV nutrition after being in the hospital for my induction chemo. We won't pick up the pump and backpack until after I go home from the transplant, and then every other day we'll visit the clinic for supplies such as saline syringes, sterile wipes, and my medications.

Today I went in for a blood draw and the much-anticipated CT scan, which will determine whether we go forward with the transplant or not. I can't imagine there would still be inflammation in the lungs after all this time and since I feel so great, but that's what I thought last time and there it was, so it's hard to know. We'll know the results of the scan tomorrow.

Well, it's time for the 5-mile walk back to my scooter. I'll report tomorrow on the result of the CT scan and the data review meeting where we'll make the go/no-go decision. Wish me luck!