Finally!

Man, it's kind of bitter sweet when you're excited they've scheduled a bone marrow transplant finally.  I'll give you a minute to swallow that.  Normally, I would NOT be excited in the least (except to have the end in sight!), but considering the past 3 weeks.... I'd say that's plenty of set backs and let's get the show on the road.

Since I last updated I was released from Soin, a local hospital, where I spent 5 days.  They were looking for some sort of infection because I kept getting fevers.  Well, 2 hospital stays later, some frustrating conversations with doctors, they found my symptoms to be myeloma related to they want me in for transplant ASAP.  I don't know "why" it's had to be this difficult..... I am thankful, so thankful for the people around me helping me every moment!  Especially My seester Amy and bro Marshall for letting me stay at their house and recover recently!  I will say that through this I KNOW, already, some of the small nuggets Gods been teaching me along the way.  Some, not easy lessons to digest.  And the rest of it I'm like... I'm moving forward and embracing hope and saying God show me the doors to walk through when this is over.  Show me what YOU want my life to look like.  That's a tall order folks.  That order calls for change, and it also calls to NOT care what others think about my decisions.  I get hung up on that so much.  But I'm learning, it doesn't matter.  Gods opinion is the only one I care about, tough pill to swallow?  For some, but that's where I'm at.

So transplant is scheduled for THIS Monday, 3/3.  This is a 16-18 day hospital stay.... they'll give me a high dose of chemo, infuse my healthy stem cells back into me, and watch them grow!  It's such a long stay because the chemo causes all of my counts to sort of nose dive and it can be very easy to get infection during that time, so they really have to monitor you.  It's a pretty high dose of chemo so a lot of people struggle with nausea, etc.  So pray for no nausea, and pray that God is working on and with every single doctor and nurse on my team.  God, give them wisdom and help this to be the smoothest ever!  I think it's days 4-6 that'll be the toughest for me side-effect wise, so keep me in prayer a lot Thurs-Sat, please :)

And I'm ready to start looking ahead.  This whole thing had me sort of stuck in the very sticky place that it is for some time, and it's sometimes hard to look past that.  However, I'm choosing to look ahead.  Like the Proverbs 31 woman who laughs without fear of the future.  Ha!  So now you're all updated.  Not sure I'll get a chance to update in hospital, we will see.  Thanks everyone for praying, I appreciate it more than you know!

oxoxox
Leslie