Feb 10

Here is my tentative schedule. When I get out of the hospital this time I will meet with the bone marrow transplant doctor to see when they want me to go thru the rest of my procedures. Whenever they want me back in the hospital (it will probably be 2 to 3 weeks after I get out this time) I will go thru a session of chemo exactly like I went thru this time. One day on, one day off, on, off, and one final day on so I would have 3 days of chemo consisting of two bags per day twelve hours apart and one day in between each day. Hope that makes sense. That session will probably be at City Of Hope unless they don't have any beds available when I need to go in. If not I'll go to Kaiser Panorama again. When my white counts begin to come up on that session they will harvest my stem cells to insert back in at the time of my bone marrow transplant. The way they harvest and then put them back in is they put a needle in my arm that's hooked up to a machine that actually takes out the stem cells and then lets the flow of blood go back into my body thru my Hickman catheter. My doctor wasn't sure what size Hickman they put in so if I don't have the large one in me now, they'll have to take mine out and put the large one in. This would mean another surgery so let's pray that they put the large one in initially. I'll ask my doctor to check on what size they put in already. My next hospital stay for a chemo session (the one to harvest the stem cells) will last 3 to 4 weeks and the bone marrow transplant session (definitely done at City of Hope) will be one month. That's what I know of my upcoming schedule. Deb and I are talking about taking a short vacation when I get out this time. It will probably be just a few days but we both need to get away and we're probably going to go somewhere by the beach (we both love the ocean) just to relax and try to forget life for a while. So that's the definite plan, unless things change, of course! LOL! IN HIS HANDS,
Ernie