Dark Times

It's been a while since my last blog.  I apologize for that.  Other than being tired and a bit sick, I don't really have a good excuse for not writing lately.  Usually a lack of writing reflects a lack of writing material and I suppose that will be my excuse this time as well.

This is day five of the transplant.  My medical team has been watching my white blood cell count drop each day and now they are almost completely gone.  Tomorrow should be the absolute lowest count and that's also when I'm most susceptible to catching something.  This dangerous time will go on for about six days until my new bone marrow starts creating new white blood cells.  

In the meantime, I'm eating a little and drinking whatever I can handle.  I'm still hooked up to a five hour bag of hydration each day.  It's pumped into my catheter with a little machine that I carry around in a backpack.  Apparently our bodies are not made to function without bone marrow and without white blood cells.  I feel exhausted after a walk of a mile or two.  But I have been told repeatedly that I look and seem extremely well compared to other transplant patients at my stage in the game.

Our activities for myself and my son David who is currently my caretaker have been just keeping track of the daily medicine changes and shopping for a car.  Both my son's Subaru and my Nissan died recently.  We thought finding a car in Seattle would be much easier than in Anchorage or Fairbanks (where he lives) but most cars down here don't have 4wd and many are extremely high mileage cars due to the mild climate. We're still looking on Craigslist every day.  If fact, if you know someone selling a used car, send me the details.  One of us might be interested!

I'll try to keep up more often.  There hasn't been lot of practicing and not a lot of activity.  For now, I'm just waiting out the dark times and waiting for the sun to come back up in about six days.