Day +1

Despite the dopiness I felt as the stem cells were being pumped into me yesterday evening, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. There was certainly a lot to think about and some major emotional readjustment to do: for months, everything had been leading up to that climactic medical moment (kind of like the birth of a child), but suddenly the horizon looked (and still looks) a lot flatter. The complex transplant plans came together beautifully, and now we settle in to wait for engraftment (when the new stem cells come to root in my bone marrow and start making a new immune system). This doesn’t happen overnight, unfortunately; most estimates I’m hearing are between 2-3 weeks, if all goes well. Poor Lucy has been asking when I’m going to come home, and it’s hard not to have a proper answer ready to give her, beyond the long explanation of why I can’t come home today, as she seems to have expected. (I got Uncle James’s stem cells, didn’t I? Well, yes, but…)

One further resemblance between me and a very young child: when all else fails, sometimes judicious use of Benadryl will induce much-needed sleep.