I am exactly 6 days away from my transplant this morning and I'm officially freaked out. On 2/3 I attended a bone marrow transplant class along with my brother-in-law at the Perelman Center where I used to get my infusions and the information was too much to take. The nurse practitioner tried to keep everything as light and tried to be as supportive as possible, but the elephant in the room was still there. This is going to be the most difficult undertaking of my life.
My sister, mother, and pre-wife had already gone to the class 2 weeks prior (I was supposed to attend as well, but I was in the hospital as a patient and couldn’t be around other people) so I already had much of the information, but sitting through it myself and receiving a big binder with my name on it with everything that’s going to change was a bit much. I don’t know how to process this. I can’t seem to wrap my head around it, laugh about it, and move on. I’m freaked out.
Once piece of new information that I found out at the class was that I will be forbidden to drink alcohol for an entire year from day 0! WTF?!? I almost threw in the towel and told her that I think I’ll take my chances with this whole Myelofibrosis thing. Not that drinking is this huge part of my life, but this is kind of a big year. This means that wedding – no alcohol. Can you imagine that? Having to shake the hands of those people that I really don’t know and pretend to care about them and smile and to it completely sober? Vegas is looking pretty good to me right now. Never mind the wedding. The bachelor party! No alcohol. No alcohol at my bachelor party. I don’t even know how to elaborate on that point. Our honeymoon – not a drop to drink. We haven’t even chosen where our honeymoon is going to be, but I’m pretty sure that I want to drink on it! }o-/
So in response to this new information, I figured I would just spend these last few days absolutely blasted. Wrong. What I failed to realize was that I’m too anemic to drink and enjoy it. I’ve been taking shots of a drug called Neupogen over the past two weeks to keep me healthy. The way it works is that it forces my bone marrow to contract and expand in order to create more blood cells than it would normally create. Of course, since the process is forced and is unnatural it is also somewhat unregulated. When the marrow expands, it doesn’t stop until it hits the walls of my bone; not the most pleasant experience. Anyway, I was under the assumption that the drug forced my marrow to create ALL TYPES of blood cells, but that’s apparently not the case. It only creates white blood cells and by the way I’ve been feeling over the last few days, my red blood cell/hemoglobin count has dropped to below 8 (the threshold for me to get a transfusion). You would think that having a few drinks while you’re anemic would make you feel drunker than you’re supposed to and for some it might, but unfortunately for me, I just feel sick, get a headache, and come home and throw up like a high school kid going to his first keg party. So to recap – I’ve spent the last 2 nights eating out, Thursday night I drank a lot, Friday night I only had a little. Both nights I came home and yacked like some rookie.
Anyway, today is my last day of freedom. I’ve asked people to come over for one last visit and I’m looking forward to it. I’m basically going to leave the door open here and let people come in as they please and spend as much time as they want. It will be really great to spend some time with my loved ones one last time before I’m normal. My friend Chrissy said that she has some sort of surprise for me and I’m looking forward to that, obviously. I’m also looking forward to the many Skype dates I plan on having over the coming weeks. Today is also the last day that I can eat food from outside the home. I’m thinking a nice dose of McDonald’s and other crap will definitely be in order.
For now, since this post was a little morbid and I want to leave on a happy note, I leave you with this amazing article:
Thank you for your support and kindness, everyone!
Let me just say that you'll be so naturally high on your wedding day that you won't need to drink. Mostly, you won't have TIME to eat. Heck. Most people don't have time to EAT!
ReplyDeleteAs for the bachelor party - drunken escapades are overrated. :)
Look at the positive side of this - you have to give some things up, but you'll get so much more at the end.
You're in my prayers.