Back Home and Unpacked

This was a short stay.

Five days of cytarabine chemotherapy which was 30 times more potent than the original induction chemotherapy treatment ended yesterday. We brought Gil home this morning.

He is feeling remarkably well considering that this round of chemotherapy is designed to kill all the remaining mutated cancer cells.

According to his physicians, he will begin feeling the effects of this latest treatment on days 7 through 14. We are on day 6 today. They say that these consolidation-induced side effects will not be as difficult to tolerate as the previous induction-induced side effects. We're hopeful.

We don't yet know when the bone marrow transplant will be taking place. We do know that Gil will be going to have his blood work checked every few days until the transplant date and will get transfusions as needed on an outpatient basis. He needs to keep an eye on his temperature which will be an early indicator of infection.

On another note, my Book Club group had their annual summer movie night and dinner last night. We usually see something in the "light summer fare" category -- this time, The Time Traveler's Wife -- with dinner for all at CPK afterwards. After sharing information with one another about our lives, and kids, and concerns, I wondered aloud if there would ever be another dinner for all of us that didn't mention health-related issues or concerns for ourselves or our friends or our loved ones.

Marika laments that she only has 17 days left in Michigan before she heads back out to the West Coast for her sorority's rush and the beginning of the fall semester of her Junior year. She's finishing up her summer work in a pharmaceutical research lab at U-M this week and has loved it.

Evan still hobbles on his crutches and spends inordinate amounts of time in the library with his med student friends.

Adam continues to work hard in his third year of PhD work and still finds time to love Laura and Bodhi -- in that order!

I'm girding myself for the upcoming transplant and will hope that when it's all over, I'm not toxic on Karmanos Cancer Center and that I have a fully recovered and life-embracing husband to spend the foreseeable future with.

When he's clearly into full recovery mode, I'll want to look for meaningful work for myself. I don't know about facing another long Michigan winter without a job to head off to each day.

Haiku:

Five days at Beaumont

Not as hard as the last time.

Waiting now ... for what?