Ok now that I'm done complaining, on to other matters!

I got my line placed this morning so I am ready to start the transplant tomorrow.

At first I was a little annoyed when I showed up to line placement and they told me I needed and order and a platelet count. This meant I had to walk over to the Myeloma clinic to get things sorted out, and it's a bit of a hike. Once I got to the clinic I ran into the other fellow patient who had been going through induction at the same time, he and his wife (I'll call them J and M) are really lovely people and live right here in Little Rock. I'd been thinking about them, especially after running into the other gentleman (F) yesterday, so I ended up being glad I had to take the detour to the clinic. J is doing well and will start his transplant either next week or the following week. They are hoping to push back a week to spend Easter with their family. I hope Dr. B agrees to the switch! We chatted for a few minutes and exchanged information, so I'm looking forward to keeping in touch!

You may or may not remember from last time that I was pretty uncomfortable last time after they placed the line, and I'm happy to report it's not as bad this time. I guess the garden hose (er, Quinton) the put in for collection stretched my vein out nicely last time. I had a different set of staff working this time, for the first time the familiar Sheila wasn't there. I did have a nice long discussion with the woman doing the prep about the coverings they use since I had several bad allergic reactions to the different adhesives last time. The only covering that agreed with me was the one they used in the clinic, which I now know is called SorbaView 2000. I learned the hard way with the Quinton placement, that even something that looks similar to the SorbaView does not cut it. My skin blistered something fierce with that one, and you can still see where it was irritated.

The doctor doing the placement was German, and recognized my last name as German. He offered some pronunciation advice, and asked about the origins. I used the excuse of marrying into it, but I guess I need to find out this information since I had essentially the same conversation with Dr. B yesterday! We also all had a nice discussion on baking cookies and apple strudel while he was doing the placement. Never a dull moment!

So tomorrow I start the transplant process. This is essentially 4 days of chemo to destroy my bone marrow, followed by an infusion of my stem cells to regrow my bone marrow. So on days 1-4 I'll get melphalan, velcade, thalidomide, and dexamethasone, then on day 5 they will infuse the stem cells. It's the melphalan (a derivative of mustard gas) that does the most of the dirty work. After that my cell counts will crash over the next 7-10 days, then come back up over the next 7-10 after that.

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