Day 42, Monday, March 11th, 2013

I'm breaking form.

I've been writing these up as retrospective dailies, but that's not going to work right now, because tomorrow, I start the chemo and radiation prep for my first transplant. This week is going to suck in ways that you can't even imagine. Actually, I'm pretty sure that most of you can imagine feeling absolutely wiped out and needing to barf, so yeah, I am knowingly, voluntarily, showing up for a week of procedures that are going to have that exact effect, and I think you can understand exactly why I am not looking forward to it. As such, I doubt that I'm going to have much in the way of coherence or motivation for writing, or rather, that what I do write will lack my usual verve. I'm going to feel like a bag of smashed assholes, and that tends to cut down on both my vocabulary and my sentence structure, not to mention my ability to find ways to use phrases like "bag of smashed assholes" in writing that is otherwise fit for polite company.

In the morning, I am getting admitted to the University of Washington Medical Centre, where I'll stay for at least the next three weeks. I found this out this morning, along with some other things, and have been rather occupied since, or I would have had this up hours ago. 

My chemo regimen was changed slightly: I'm now getting cyclophosphamide, the ol' "tried and true" of chemotherapy. It, Jesus Christ, I can't believe I'm writing this, is a kind of nitrogen mustard. Those of you who are familiar with WWI and gas warfare can go change your shorts right about now. It's not nice stuff, but it is about as effective as it gets for chemo. It's not the tippy-top, but it's up there. I'm getting two days of this stuff, then I get a day off, then there are those three consecutive days of total body radiation (TBR), and then, on Monday, I get my first stem cell transplant, the one composed of my own cells.

I'm going to be tired.

At least Ash will be coming down to visit me on the 27th. I miss her. She's staying for a couple of weeks, so I should at least be outpatient for some of her time here. She'll be back in the summertime, since, as a teacher, she has the summer off.

Other news: found out today that for a related, haplo-identical stem cell transplant, they much prefer to do bone marrow transplants over the much simpler (in execution) hematopoietic stem cell transplant (the blood stuff) that I'd been under the impression that I was getting. Dad is definitely going to be my donor, though he's above the age that the international registry would normally use, and transplant number two is going to be a full-on, hundred plus series of punches (needles) into the upper pelvis for the both of us.

It's been a stressful day. The weekend was nice, though. Jaqueline came down again, and we had some hangout time. Went to go see Oz the Great and Powerful in IMAX, and it was pretty good. Normally, I don't really care for 3D in movies - it washes out the colour, makes action sequences blurry, and doesn't really improve the quality of the movie - but in IMAX, it is infinitely more worthwhile. 

What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground Beef.