April 11

Hello to everyone reading this blog!!! I have been enjoying myself while out of the hospital. It sure feels good to relax at home, but we have taken some trips as well. Deb and I and Jim and Joan took a trip on our motorcyles. We left and made our decision of where to stay the next night that morning and it felt good. We would like to take a much longer trip that way too, just going wherever we feel like going! My daughter Dana and her family drove out from Denver so I could see her kids because I didn't get to play with them last time they were out at Christmas and it was really great to see them. They usually fly because it's such a long drive (15 hours) but they drove because her kids seem to get sick right after flying (catching colds and the flu). Deb and I have taken that drive and it seems very long so I really want to thank Dana and Dave for doing that for me!! It really wore me out playing with the grandkids but it was sure worth it!!!
I am definitely going in to the hospital (City of Hope) on Monday April 16th. I have had many tests this week and on Friday I have to have my Hickman catheter replaced because they can't withdraw blood from it anymore. I had a fever on Monday and had to go to the emergency room at Kaiser Pan City. We got there at 6:30pm and left at midnight. They didn't find out why I got the fever but gave me some anitbiotics. The tough part was that we had to get up at 5:30am the next moring to be down at Kaiser Sunset. We were pretty tired that day! When I come home from my transplant I can't have animals in the house and we couldn't find anyone to take our cat so Dana took the cat until we move to Denver. Good luck Dana!!! LOL!!! My brother has gone thru all his testing and everything looks very good for him to be my donor. He sure is stepping up to the plate for me and I really appreciate him helping me like this. He has to give himself shots for a few days before they take the stemcells and he is really good about it. He actually already gave himself a practice shot so he knows what it's like. Yea Dan!!! He will have to sit in a chair and they put needles into both arms with tubes coming out of them. His blood will come out of one arm and go into a machine that collects his stemcells and then the blood goes back into his other arm. They say the process takes about 5 to 6 hours and that he might have to do it for 2 to 3 days, but usually it's just one day. This will be on April 24th. The next day they will hang his stemcells over me and they will go into me just like a blood transfusion, it just drips into my I.V., and I don't know how long it takes. Blood transfusions take 2 to 3 hours to go into me so I expect the same amount of time for the stemcells but I'm just not sure. I will already have had 6 days of chemo to prepare my body to accept his stemcells. There might be side effects with the chemo so we'll have to deal with that, but there might also be a rejection factor. With bone marrow transplants my organs might not readily accept his bone marrow (it's call graft vs. host disease) and the doctors will have to stay on top of it to make sure my body accepts his marrow. This is what will keep me in the hospital longer than the one month they are expecting. Thank you all so much for praying for me and encouraging me. It has meant so much to know that so many are doing this and I hope I do much better at communicating my encouragement to others who are going thru things like this. I know pretty much everyone who is reading this is going thru some sort of trial or difficulty in their life right now, so keep your spirits up and keep putting one foot in front of the other if its that bad for you, because no matter what we are going thru, if we perservere, if we just keep on fighting, we will get thru it one way or the other. I know when I've experienced bad times in my life, there were always good times that followed, so hang on to that as well. We spend low times in the valleys, but we also spend great times on the mountain tops too!!! God bless you all,
Ernie