The end of September

I believe that I still have all my marbles. But just in case I don't, I'm continuing the journaling on the last day of September. I haven't counted the days since I dropped off the radar but it still seems pretty surreal.

The weather is lovely, the trees are starting to turn and Mom & Dad's house has many windows looking out on a wooded lot. In addition a thoughtful friend deposited a large bouquet of roses on the back deck that I can enjoy in the changing sunlight through the day.

The lot is full of walnut trees and they drop constantly. A thud on the deck, a surprising thud when you back over one in the driveway. I mention this because it is a daily ritual for Dad to gather walnuts. and in a like father-like son episode on the weekend, Walt complained that he cleared all the walnuts Satuday morning and there were now 70 laying on the deck. He used that specific number...I have not decided whether he actually counted them.

I feel pretty good, not so foggy as I felt on the weekend. The basket of pills does not look so overwhelming...some days it really looks like an egg basket, some of them are so big.

The clinic visit today was uneventful except for seeing Dr.Ganguly practically exuberant over the chest scan from yesterday. He is generally low key and business-like, but today he was downright excited and clearly much less worried about difficulties with my recovery from this phase of treatment. My WBC count was 1.3 this morning, which is surprisingly low to me. He said it could go to zero, but not likely. And of course, the whole point of this mini-transplant protocol was to avoid going to zero, thus avoiding a recurrence of the lung disease. The platelets are dropping daily, but the Hemoglobin is still high (for me) around 9. It is the last to drop. They estimate I will be needing transfusions again next week.

Mom is going to bridge and Unit tomorrow. I'm excited. She has not attended her routine social gatherings since I came to stay and I think it takes a bigger toll on her than the constant cleaning and monitoring that is required to ensure a safe environment for me. Janice is here for the month of October. She has taken a leave from her job as a special ed teacher in Ft. Scott, KS to be here through the grafting process. I bought a book "All about Scrabble" in order to better defend myself against her. Unfortunately, she found it right off and even pointed out some things to me that I had overlooked. sigh. Lucky I have chemo-brain to blame. (The book is out of date because it doesn't have the 2 letter word "QI" which is a lifesaver. sigh)

Walt is feeling pretty good. He still has the occasional headache. He moved into the Marriott yesterday for the John Deere annual meeting. So we won't see him again until Friday.

Janice ordered a t-shirt for me today that says "Blame it on the Y chromosome" Since I received stem cells from my brother, my blood will be boy blood. I will have XY chromosomes instead of XX. The transplant team likes this because it's easy to tell how things are working by how many XX vs. XY cells there are. But I plan to take full advantge of this new excuse when I lose at Scrabble or Gin.

So many thanks to my caregivers. all of them. Mom and Dad. Mari and Janice. Conor and Walt and Mark. Lori. Trish and Rhonda. Nieces and nephews. Everyone has chipped in. Thanks to everyone for the cards and letters and email. Some send me jokes, some send me pictures and some send little tokens. I treasure them all. My scout friends have been there in spades. My book club friends, girls on tour, work friends. Even the liberals and conservatives all seem to be on the same page. I feel like it's a huge team working on my behalf and I am just coasting along atop all the good wishes.

Thank you everyone.


Cathi