Transplant

My rest day concluded Friday morning after 24 hours of down-time. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as nice as it sounds, but was necessary to let my white blood cell (WBC) count drop to zero. It was mostly a blur of nausea and sleep. The transplant, which sounds quite ominous, was actually pretty smooth. Around 11am I got a host of pre-medications including anti-nausea, and anti-allergy meds. About a 1/2 hour after that they brought my cells in, thawed them in a warm bath, put them in a syringe and reinjected them into me. It was a little disconcerting seeing a needle that big, but the worst part was the overwhelming smell of the preservative in the blood, which makes you feel kind of sick.
The rest of the day I pretty much slept. The body was out of it, and working hard to accept all the new cells, so before I knew it, it was Saturday morning.

Saturday was a decent day, I felt very tired, and slept most of the day, but the nausea began wearing off, and I was able to eat and drink a bit.

However, today has been a much different story. Due to a combination of treatments, and having no immune system my mouth, throat, and stomach feel pretty raw, and equivalently painful. It's been pretty rough, and has limited my ability to eat and drink, which is normal, but frustrating. I've been trying to fight through the pain, and sip water, but it's pretty excruciating. They've started to give me some small doses of morphine though, which is nice, and will increase as the pain increases, so hopefully there is some relief in sight. I'm told this stuff will heal as my counts begin to recover over the next 10 days. So bear with me, as I'm having a tough time answering the phone, and typing emails, and writing on the blog, but hopefully over the next week things will improve.

Will catch up with everyone soon,
-Jeff