Day Minus Three

Its' SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY...

We are now into "Day Minus Three". Today Jody will get the double dose of chemo, as well as a few assorted other drugs to prevent the inevitable nausea. Jody remains positive, although last night before I left she got a little melancholy. I got a little "sappy" too. We both have to keep working on the "positive" and draw strength from all your prayers, love and "good" thoughts you are sending Jody's way.

Jody laughing it up with Heidi

Jody is making lots of friends here at PSL. Her most recent is Heidi, she is her day nurse today. Heidi is going to be giving her the two chemo drugs today Fludarabine and Busulfan along with an assortment of other drugs. (FYI you can click on the pictures and it will zoom in, or enlarge the picture). If you look to the right of Heidi you can see the drugs Jody is getting. The ATG drug is used for anti-rejection. They are trying to condition Jody so she can receive the foreign stem cells on Wednesday, "Day Zero".  The ATG will take six hours to infuse. They give it to her very slowly and have to wait 24-hours before the next dose on Monday and Tuesday.

We decided since Jody was doing so well that today might be an opportunity to bring her dad by to see her. So I picked him up at the nursing home around 11:00. As we came off the elevator we could hear Jody greeting people in the hall. Anyone who knows Jody, knows she will have every ones name rank and serial number before she leaves. 

Tom, Jody, and Joe... notice the gowns?

Here  we are... I tried to remove some of the redness from Joe's eye, so that's me not him with the white spot in his right eye. Joe has Macular Degeneration and has lost his sight in one eye and can see fair out of the other eye. Still gets around great (for those who do not know Joe, he is 95 years old and still very sharp). He is very ardent about knowing what Jody is going through. One day he took me aside to tell me Jody was getting a bone transplanted into her neck. He elaborately described how they were going to take the bone out of some guy and put it in Jody's neck to make her better and cure the cancer. I agreed with him and gave him a big hug.

Jody got her first dose of Busulfan around 10:00, which took about three hours to infuse. This was followed  up with a 30 minute dose of Fludarabine. We started the ATG around 4:00. She sat at the table and eat dinner "chicken fried steak" with carrots (Remember this was supposed to make her sick... it did not phase her). Jody is doing quite well and tolerating the drugs she is being given. They say she will hit the wall somewhere around "Day Plus Five" then again she might sail straight through. Everyone reacts differently.

I finally left the hospital around 11:30.... so that's it for today

"The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931)
Lebanese writer and philosopher