After several weeks of nothing to do but live a normal life, today was the first day of testing to confirm my readiness for the stem cell transplant. It was an early start for Julia and I because we needed to be in Scottsdale at 8:00 AM for the first test. As a result, we were up at 5:30 getting ready for the 60 minute drive.
Things were going well until Julia’s cell phone rang just a little before 7:00 with us about 15 miles from our house. It seems that Jason had forgotten his back pack in Julia’s car and desperately needed it for school. This says a lot about how much Jason studies over the weekend, but that is another story entirely. (sigh) We immediately turned around and eventually met Justin at Isagenix (my employer) so that he could drop it off in the school office where Jason could pick it up.
For those of you that know me well, being late is one of the things that drives me crazy. I used to break into a sweat when I realized that I would be late for work, even by a minute or two. Amazingly enough, Julia and I have been able to work through this problem of mine, despite the fact she is the polar opposite. If there is a chance that she can finish up putting her make-up on at the last possible minute and still get where she is going at an acceptable time, it is OK with her. In the background, while pacing, I have told her the how many minutes we have before we NEED to leave at least 15 times as she goes through this process. Yet, despite the differences in our approach to timeliness, there is little blood shed during these exchanges.
After the drop off, I drove like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. Somehow, there were no police on the entire trip and we actually walked into the Mayo at precisely 8:00 AM. Interestingly, after risking life and limb to get there, we had to wait 30 minutes to meet with the transplant coordinator. Not the beginning that I had hoped for. The meeting went about an hour and we were off to my blood test.
Since all of this started, I have had at least 25 blood tests. The most I have ever had taken was five viles of blood. As I walked into the little room and sat down, the technician was looking at a long printout of labels, much like an accordion. It looked a lot like the nerd from high school showing off his hoard of attached unused Trojans.
As she began to put the labels on viles, I began to gulp. She didn’t stop at five, or six or seven. She kept going until she reached sixteen. I almost passed out at the thought. I had obviously been assigned the bride of Dracula as my tech. Luckily, my blood was flowing well and I escaped without needing a transfusion.
The day continued with a chest x-ray and electrocardiogram that took less than 60 seconds. I wonder how much that baby cost? Yet, things were looking up as this gave us a little more time for lunch between tests/meetings.
As we walked into the restaurant, I noticed that I had a voice message on my cell phone. I had turn off the ringer while in the hospital and missed the actual call. As I listed to the message, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being “Punked.” (if you are familiar with the TV show.) The message stated that they made a mistake and need two more viles of blood. It appears that they needed two more to complete the golf course. Sixteen wasn’t enough, they needed eighteen.
After we returned, I was able to get right in and they hit the other arm for the remaining viles. It was then on to my echocardiogram. That only took 30 minutes so it was off to the last meeting of the day with a nurse from the Apheresis or harvest area. This is where things got interesting.
Not only was the RN cute, she wanted to go to a private room and all she seemed to want to talk about was sex. Certainly taken in the right context, this would be a great pretext for a porn movie. Of course, I could never be so lucky.
All the questions were about my previous conquests, or in my case, lack of conquests. No, I had never had sex with a man or a prostitute or someone with HIV or someone from Africa. It seems like everything I answered was “No.” In this particular case, “No’s” are a good thing. It certainly makes getting accepted into a program like this much easier if you are disease free.
Before I knew it, we were on our way home. Didn’t really do much all day but sit around, but was I beat. I actually fell asleep watching TV at about 8:30. Probably had the best night of sleep in a long time. Maybe bloodletting is what I need to do every day to sleep through the night.
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