The countdown begins

T-minus 7

With the transplant now scheduled, all days are measured from the transplant day.  That makes Tuesday, June 10th Transplant day minus 7 days.  The prep work begins.  I only had one procedure today, but the hospital scheduled it for 7:30am with a check in time of 6:30am.  Joanne and I drove up Monday night to my Mom's house in Orlando to cut down the morning drive. It didn't take very long before I was in the operating room to have a central line inserted through my chest.  I'm not sure why this is a better choice than the PICC line, but it seems like standard procedure for marrow transplants.

The rest of the day was spent checking into my room and unpacking. They hooked up IV fluid to begin hydrating my kidneys, but otherwise I was left to work and rest.  Joanne hung out for the day through dinner time, then headed back to Vero.  I was left with the NBA playoff game that didn't go so well for the Heat.  It gave me a good excuse to turn it off at half time and go to sleep.

T minus 6 (June 11)

The Drs started to make their rounds, but I still wasn't scheduled for any chemo until 9:00 at night.  I was able to work the majority of the day without too many interruptions.  With all my family out of town I had to break down and order lunch from the hospital.  It isn't any better than last time.  I slugged down a nasty piece of grilled chicken while I developed a new plan for dinner.  When I was watching a CNBC show, they featured Grub Hub which offers delivered take out food in metro areas.  One of the benefits of being in Orlando is that services like this exist.  So I found some nice Italian stuffed shells and ordered them online.  Less then an hour later, they were at my door in the hospital - good to know.

The pre-meds started at 8:30, chemo 1 at 9:00, chemo 2 at 10:00. Then there are five follow up blood draws through the night to help measure how quickly your body metabolizes the chemo.  The doctors will adjust the future doses based on these results.  The good news is that there is only four days of chemo in the entire plan.  All going smooth so far.

Just to leave you laughing, one of my PAs is named Dr. Balls.  I'll need to keep an eye on what he's doing.