Day Zero

I didn't post yesterday because I felt pretty bad. I had a lot of cramping and bloating. They've put a lot saline solution in me the last few days because they want a 'wet' environment for the transplant. So when I checked in a week ago, I weighed 170. This morning I weighed 184.
I felt much better this morning, though, which is good, because today was transplant day (Day Zero or Birthday, as the nurses call it). Yes, I now have another person's stem cells coursing through my veins and attempting to enter my bone marrow in order to boot me up a new immune system. Since my transplant was a bone marrow donation and not just a stem cell donation, the procedure took three and a half hours, not the fifteen minutes we had initially been told. No matter. All I had to do was sit in my room while the nurse hooked up the big bag o' marrow/stem cells/whatever to my 'tree' and feed it into my catheter. I just had to lay there and watch a rerun of the OU/Florida game on a sports channel. Now the waiting begins to see how well the new cells engraft. The next few weeks will be a challenging time because my white blood cell counts will be down, and I'll have to be very careful to avoid any sort of infection. Anyway, I'm going to cut this short because I'm pretty exhausted. We're both just very happy that this milestone has been reached. We'd been dreading this day, although we have of course hoped that it would effect a cure. But it's just such a strange, science-fictionish procedure that it's had us pretty scared. The day went well, though. Thanks to all of you who have sent comforting words through this blog or otherwise. We can't tell you how much it means. And please also send out healing wishes for my anonymous donor, wherever he may be. Thanks.