Little pieces

Today's treatment with the nasty stuff was canceled on account of the weather. Even though I want to get as much chemo in me as often as possible, I was relieved to get the call. This probably means I'm in for an all-day infusapalooza on Friday. But at least I'll have a few days to recover without losing too many hours on my paycheck.

I got off work early today so that I wouldn't get stranded in town, and I've spent the day with my boys. We played outside in the snow for a bit and then had hot cocoa. A wonderful little snow day.

But at the back of my mind, the future looms.

I think about the transplant. About Kansas City. Hope Lodge, the BMT clinic, the tri-fusion catheter surgery. The sickness, the weakness. The closeness to death. The 100 days post-transplant that I'll be away from home, at the hospital every day. I try not to think about it too much because I start to panic. Too much, too soon. How will I do this?

Hell, I'm still trying to get insurance. They can't even start the transplant process until we have that figured out. Thanks, Brownback. No need to expand Medicaid, just let the poor die.

Anyhoo.

To cope, I find myself sectioning it out into little pieces in my mind.

More salvage chemo. Remission. Insurance. Getting Laura tested as a donor (or moving on to the donor registry). Tests. Scans. Bone marrow biopsy. Harvesting stem cells. Trifusion catheter placement. Hundreds of signatures on lines at the end of medical documents explaining all of the ways I could die. Brutal chemo. Stem cells. Neutropenia. Isolation. The long wait until engraftment.

And then 100 days of watching and waiting. At least a month of that away from my son.

100 days. And then I'll be home.

One day at a time. One little piece falling into place at a time. I'll get there. And my boys will be there waiting for me.

But right here, right now, the cancer is at bay. Or at least it isn't getting larger at the moment. And Curious George is playing in the next room. And I have a little boy to cuddle. I hear my doctor's words to me on the day we discovered the latest relapse.

"Be here now. This is your story. No one else's."