Fall Colors

I remember one point during this process, during a week of fear and joy, a week of intensity and closeness, a week of mortality, that I thought to myself: I love feeling these emotions – when I’m watching a movie! Honestly there are many times that I am reminded of a headline I saw in the satirical newspaper, The Onion, right after 9/11 which read “Shattered Nation Longs to Return to Meaningless Bullshit”. We don’t really long for that, but I certainly understand the feeling. Two things happen though: you decide that you don’t want the stupid stuff you used to occupy yourself with, and, maybe some of it wasn’t so stupid after all. Hose it down. In any case, it’s rich.

Things have started picking up. I am sitting right now at City of Hope. We are here for a full day of testing and doctor visits – ECO, EKG, blood, lung test, chest x-ray, doctor visit, consent forms, CAT scan. I told Rosina she’s getting more medical treatment in one day than I’ve had in ten years. She said “I want your marrow.” I want your marrow? Is that hot or what? I wanted to French kiss her right through the face mask she’s wearing. The good news is that all of this is in prep for getting a bone marrow transplant, for a donor has been located! All we know is that a 44 year old male somewhere out in the world has a tissue type and stem cells that closely matches Rosina’s and he's willing to share. Wherever he is, he has come in to give blood and to continue the testing, so it looks like we’re on. Yea. (and) Holy crap.

Here’s the schedule. Because we’ve located a donor, Rosina can skip the next round of consolidation chemotherapy that we were planning on. She still has to do chemo before the transplant, though. She will need to come out here for two or three more visits for various things, and then on September 30, she will check in at City of Hope and begin radiation and chemo. Ten days after that begins (after her own body’s ability to make blood cells has been wiped out!), on October 10, she would receive the transplant. This is referred to as Day Zero. From that point you’re looking at 4-5 weeks in the hospital. As she told me on the phone yesterday, “I go in September 30, and I come home before Thanksgiving”. It's a long and intense stay. We saw the rooms at the hospital at COH where she'll be staying. It's really nice and in fact so is everyone we dealt with. You get the feeling that they really want to work at that specific place.

The transplant itself is pretty simple. It’s delivered as a transfusion. Then the new stem cells have to find their way around, get comfortable, and start making more cells. Basically you are getting a new facility for making new blood. It can even change your blood type. And in this case, it will. Rosina is A+, and the donor is O+. That means that Rosina’s blood type will change to O+. In fact, before the transplant itself, they will begin to change her blood over to O+ to make the transition smoother. They’ll literally swap out her blood for some O+. Additionally, it will change her chromosomes from XXY (female) to XY (male)! This has no symptom or effect on a person, it’s like changing a tag on a shirt. However, in some way I suppose it will mean I'm married to a man and gay, which is good, because i'm kind of a slob right now.
Rosina is being strong, she is doing well, and as tough and scary as all this is, things are progressing. We’ve received so many good thoughts and wishes for Rosina since school started and tremendous offers for help, thanks to everyone for that, you may be called! So here's to enjoying the next couple weeks while she's at home and I'll keep you posted.
Thanks
xo
ph