Transplant next week, finally

I am so tired right now.  I have been packing all day.  I don't feel like writing this.  But I have important news.  John and I are leaving for Hershey on Wednesday or Thursday.  And he will be admitted to Hershey Medical Center on Thursday or Friday.

We are going up one day early to get settled into Hope Lodge.

Then the next day, either Thursday or Friday, he is going to have a chest port put in.  He will have to have an operation to get this inserted.  It is a tube that goes into a vein in his chest.  He will receive fluids in it, blood transfusions if he needs them, the transplant through it, etc.  He will also have blood drawn through it.  The purpose of having a chese port (central line) is so that he will not have to be stuck repeatedly with needles.  The chest port will be left in for several months.  

The day after he has the chest port put in he will start chemo.  He will have chemo everyday for about four days. 

The next day John will have the transplant.  He will be lying down and there will be a bag that will drip the donor's bone marrow cells into his body through the chest port.  They tell us that somehow the bone marrow cells just know where to go in the recipient's body!  Wow, modern medicine!  

After the transplant is completed, John will go to the Transplant Floor.  He will remain there for several days while he recovers.  

When John is feeling well enough he will begin day hospitalization.  He will stay with me at night at the Hope House.  This could be for a couple of months, I don't know how long it will be.  It depends on how fast he recovers.  At first John will go to day hospital everyday, then eventually every other day.  The Hope House will let us stay as long as John is going to day hospital every other day.  Once it turns out to be every third day, we have to move out.  If this occurs, we are going to have to get a hotel, because we cannot drive back and forth to Hershey every three days.  We are going to have to play that one by ear when the time comes.  

So, I am going to keep you all informed though this journal.  I should have access to a computer when I get to Hope House.  I will try to write entries when I can.

Well, I am feeling pretty positive, considering.  and kind of nervous, lol.  The Lord has everything under control, I know that.

John is holding up quite well.  He is my trooper.

Oh, I shaved John's hair off today.  Well almost all off, just left the tiniest fuzz on.  Most people who are going in for a transplant shave it off beforehand.  That way they feel more in control, they don't have to watch it fall out in clumps after their chemo.  They don't get upset seeing clumps of it lying on their pillow falling out piece by piece.  This way THEY take it off.

I thought hair didn't matter.  And really in the scheme of things, it doesn't.  But seeing him kind of shocked me.  Maybe it made me realize that things would never be the same.

Okay, I will stop being philosophical now.  Change is NOT always bad. 

I better get off here before I get to ramblin', lol.

Talk at you soon, hopefully.  God bless, Krissy :)