Morning Update 10/14/05

Things are proceeding as expected. My red cells dropped last night and so we started the red blood transfusions. I am currently receiving my second pint (no not of guiness, alas). after that they give me the preliminary drugs to help with the stem cell infusion, which will occur sometime around later morning. they are giving me back 10 million of my 22 millions cells harvested. no magic about the number other than its about half of what they collected and they want to hold on to the other half for a potential second transplant (we won't go into that now). The stem cells are stored frozen in a wood preservative which has a distinctively unpleasant odor--mainly to visitors, as my body is so saturated with it, I supposedly can't notice it. I am expecting the side effects of all of this to start creeping up on me and the next few weeks to be pretty crappy. But for now I'm still doing OK. Having this blog site is so great! It is such a pleasure to be hearing from my long lost North Dakota friends. What a group. after years and years of limited contact they are coming out in droves of support. As Susan has said many times, "you can take the boy out of North Dakota, but you can't take North Dakota out of the boy." These friends reach back into grade school days and span into some college roommates. This class of mine connected long ago and we have never lost the connection, no matter how long the separation. THanks for everything,every one of you, from my friends from first grade, to our new neighbors we just met last year. My brother Mike, who now lives in Texas, and my mother, who still hails from North Dakota are here visiting and that is nice. We have put Mike to work cleaning our garage, a job he willing took on. Tom was here a few weeks ago and painted and cleaned windows. What great brothers I have. My love to all of you. Dan