The light at the end of the tunnel!

The countdown has begun.  Day 100 is only 11 days away!  I had my first appointment with the CBCI clinic “Long Term Care” provider earlier this week.  She went over all of our long-term “life after transplant” questions and she will be one of the providers that I see every few months to check in and make sure things are going well.  It’s crazy to think that I’m becoming a “short timer” at the clinic.  I will likely transition back to my primary oncologist, Dr. Liel at Kaiser in August and then I’ll just attend appointments with Dr. Nash at the transplant clinic periodically.  This summer has flown by and as I was reflecting yesterday, I continue to be so thankful that everything has gone according to plan.  Everyone behind the scenes at Kaiser (transplant coordinator) & CBCI, all my docs collaborating with one another, and the life-saving donation of cells from my little bro.  I truly am SO incredibly blessed.

As I near my “Day 100” appointment, I am doing a bunch of tests so that my transplant doc can compare my results to the pre-transplant tests.  My mom and I will be traveling downtown today (we have appointments down there every day this week!) for a pulmonary function test.  This is something that Dr. Nash is very interested in because if you recall from my blog posts pre-transplant he got very concerned about my pulmonary function & history of asthma and we had to delay my admission to the hospital by a few days so that the radiation clinic could create lung shields to protect my little lungs.  I am very interested to see what the results are this time around (fingers crossed).  I should find out on Aug 2^nd at my clinic appointment when we do the “3 month review”.  Next week I have my 3-month bone marrow biopsy.  There was some serious drama yesterday around whether or not Kaiser was going to authorize sedation for my BMBX (and I admit that I was totally freaked out when they called me and said that they weren’t sure they could get the sedation authorized).  Thankfully my Kaiser transplant nurse coordinator kicked some butt and got it authorized this time.  She also said she couldn’t promise anything but she would try to do it again for me when I am due for my 6 month BMBX this fall.

Aside from the pulmonary function test this afternoon, I have spinal chemo bright and early tomorrow morning (7:30am) and a doc appt on Friday.  TOMORROW SHOULD BE MY VERY LAST DAY OF CHEMO!!!  To top it off, my mom’s birthday is tomorrow…so we have 2 big things to celebrate tomorrow J  YIPEE!

-Chellie