Day One

Today I had my first day of pre-transplant testing. These tests are all basically just to make sure that if I receive a transplant my body is healthy enough going in to handle the chemotherapy. It was a long day, mainly because I was really tired all day today. I didn't sleep very well last night, and I had to be at the hospital at 8am today. It's really weird, and a little surreal to be on the patient side of things. Not that I've never been a patient before, it's just that at home, I know Providence like the back of my hand...here, not so much. Northwestern is a HUGE facility. Huge. And I don't know every other person I see in the hallway like I do at home.

Which leads me to my biggest WTF moment of the day today...Northwestern is not a latex free facility! Really? In 2010 there are still latex gloves EVERYWHERE! Every place I went I had to say "I'm allergic to latex" and watch as they went to get a box of vinyl gloves. Yeesh! Luckily my allergy isn't very severe, I can't imagine if I had a full blown, throat closing type of reaction. I'd be totally screwed.

So here's the list of what I had done today...and why...
     * blood draw....they drew (not kidding) like 20 tubes of blood. They are checking for a million things,
        including clotting factors, pregnancy, hepatitis, HIV, other viral things like CMV, HSV, etc.
     * sinus CT...this is just to check to make sure I don't have a sinus infection before chemo. If I have one,
        it's no big deal, they just know to treat it first.
     * chest x-ray...basic check of heart/lungs. No TB, pneumonia, etc. Also gives them a good baseline.
     * dental exam...same idea as the CT, just making sure there aren't any dental issues that need to be
        addressed before chemo/transplant.
     * EKG... checks for rhythm abnormalities.
     * vein check...this is nothing like what it sounds like. Basically I just met with the people in the blood
        center (like the infusion center at home, but all they do is blood and blood products). They explained
        about the central line I'll have placed and showed me the machine they use to harvest the stem cells.

I think that's it for today. Up next...MRI of head and neck. NOT my favorite thing at all, but I have my Klonopin ready on hand!

Chicago is lovely. So different than when I was here in January. It's a little too hot and humid for my taste, which is keeping me from doing a whole lot of exploring at this point, but as long as I take frequent AC breaks my MS symptoms seem to be staying in check. I of course miss my boys like crazy. It's the hardest part of this whole thing to be away from Mason, but it's important to both Todd and I that we keep his life as normal as possible through all this.

That's all for now...to be continued....