Onward!

I had my first shower in a few days, including my first shampoo since my initial sinus surgery. Showers are currently quite tricky. I have to find a window of time when I am not receiving something through my lines. We have to wrap the PICC line in plastic and cover the site from which the Hickman was removed. (I can't see it, but everyone who looks at the infected Hickman site says it looks terrible.) And I have a mustache of gauze under my nose. I was so preoccupied with keeping various dressings dry and keeping the gauze mustache in place with one hand while dispensing and applying shampoo with the other hand that I was halfway through my shower before I realized I still had my glasses on.

I just heard that my chemo (clofarabine) is starting today. That's good! This means I have navigated not only the infection challenge but also the scheduling challenge of aligning treatment dates with biopsy dates, transplant dates, and the schedules of other transplant patients. I'm not the only patient preparing for a transplant, some key staff do not work on weekends, and there are limits to how many patients can be processed on a given day. Anyway, it's working out.

So, starting today, five days of chemo, seven days of recovery, biopsy... then, with the right biopsy results, more chemo, and then a transplant. Last Tuesday, when we learned that the leukemia had survived the October chemo treatment, was a rough day. Since then, everything has broken the right way.

Perhaps this turn of fortune is due to the flood of support coming my way. Cards and emails (often with humorous links — gotta keep laughing) and positive thoughts and prayers from all over, a complete set of "Frasier" episodes, work parties and meals at my house... 

The most unexpected support, and almost certainly the largest in terms of the number of prayers, comes from the Swat Valley in Pakistan. If that location sounds familiar to you, it's most likely because the Swat Valley is the site of frequent U.S. drone attacks against suspected Taliban. It's also the home of a woman who is part of an English conversation group that my mother hosts for immigrants. So, five times a day, this woman's very large extended family prays to Allah for my health. (This gives me prayer coverage in all three Abrahamic religions.)

As a friend from high school commented recently, even a narrow path can get you where you need to go. Onward!