Day 96 (course 2B day 1)

Hello!  Yes, we're still here... we've just been so busy lately... mom had a great SHORT weekend home.. a few nights to rest, relax and refresh before starting course 2B (same as 2A... 28 days long).  I brought her back on sunday and will be here until wednesday when dad comes for the rest of the week...

our day today started out a bit on the cloudy side.. we had to get up to leave the hospital by 6:35 for our 7am appointment for intrathecal.. we were on time.. surprisingly.. but the clinic didn't open until 7, and the large mass of people waiting out in the lobby rushed the door as soon as it opened, and we ended up like 50th in line... we were still optimistic that it wasn't that big of a deal because we had an appointment with Dr. Wetzler.. well that didn't seem to matter to anyone.. we got called in for blood labs around 8:40 (labs take an hour to get back) and we then knew we wouldn't be called in until almost 10.  we were right.. many people were extra cranky this morning.. nothing seemed to be going right and some ornery woman was trying to start a tea party in the waiting room... mom chimed in for 1 second and i said... being negative gets you nowhere, we need to stay positive.. thank god the ring leader got called in and the crowd silenced..

at 10ish we were called in and waited a bit longer.. our nurse had been on a leave for 5 weeks and evidently all of the processes at the hospital underwent a major transformation, because she had no idea what she was doing and kept reminding us... at first we were a little leery.. but she turned out to be really nice and tuned back into earth pretty quickly.  Mom then got some saline, some chemo, some nausea meds and some anxiety meds.. then Dr Wetzler showed up dressed as R2D2, and our day instantly got better.  He said mom's numbers were excellent.. she looked excellent (except that she needed to eat more and gain weight) and he did the lumbar puncture without mom hardly knowing it was happening.  she felt a slight pinch and that was it!  he was in, the spinal fluid was drawn, chemo administered and we were resting for an hour! Mom felt great... she got her chemo shot.. barely felt it.. and we were off to the hotel for lunch. 

While waiting for our shuttle back to the DoubleTree, we saw Jennifer (from transplant) she said she had started working on finding the matches from the donor bank. mom was relieved because we learned last week that course 3 was 28 days instead of 70.. so we could be running short on time for looking for matches.. Jennifer promised she'd call as soon as she heard anything.  That was about 2pm.. we caught our shuttle and grabbed a salad and a sandwich from the hotel bistro.  While enjoying her first salad since July, mom got a phone call from Jennifer and they found a 100% match!  We were so excited.. that's one prayer answered, thank you god!!!  They are going to look for a back-up, but she'll contact that match and get the process rolling.. thank you for praying with us. 

we took a rather long nap after lunch and are just moving about, going to get some dinner, do some exercises and head back to bed.  What started out as a rather cloudy day turned into a beautifully sunny day!   

we hope tomorrow brings us a restful, happy, pain free day.. maybe even a trip to wegmans!  We'll let you know. 

thank you again.. keep those prayers coming.. they're working.

love.