Con limón y sal

After just two days of stem cell collection I got a total of 9-point-something million stem cells that are now sitting in an American Red Cross freezer somewhere, just waiting for me to need them for my stem cell transplant. Yeah! 9 million is a lot – in fact, it’s almost enough for 2 transplants (I needed to get at least 5 million for mine), so we’re very happy to have gotten so many without any real troubles. It was a kind of boring and gross process, but I’m totally fine and feeling good now. Now I have until the first week of June to recover from ICE and relax, and get ready for the big nasty chemo and the transplant. I’ll be having a PET scan in May, but other than that I’ll be free from treatment and doctors for a bit….yeah. Después de sólo dos días de colección de células madre, tengo un total de nueve-punto-algo millones de células madre que ahora están en algún congelador de la Cruz Roja Americana esperando que las necesite para mi trasplante. 9 millones son muchas – de hecho,...

I was released today from round #2 of ice…um, that really sucked. I won’t spend three paragraphs detailing the unfortunate series of events, but rather will give you the Reader’s Digest version. I was admitted on Thursday; started getting chemo; got really sick with a high fever Friday night and suffered only mildly lucidly through that until Sunday; Monday the fever broke and I got antibiotics; Tuesday they finally let me go home. I supercalifragiwhatever hate being in the hospital to the nth degree…June looks like it’s going to be a fun month. Hoy me dieron de alta de la segunda ronda de la quimio ICE, y dejenme decirles que estuvo del nabo. Pero decidi no durar tres párrafos detallando la muy desafortunadamente desagradable serie de eventos, sino darles la versión cortita pa’ que no se me aburren. Me internaron el jueves y me empezaron a dar la quimio; el viernes en la tarde me enfermé con una fiebre de más de cuarenta grados, la cual sufri con muy poca lucidez y cordura hasta el...

When I read other peoples' blogs, I'm always looking for pictures of them, I love it when people post pictures 'cause then you have a face to put with the words. So, here are some photos... Cuando yo leo los blog de otras personas, siempre estoy buscando fotos porque me encanta que la gente ponga fotos....asi puedes imaginar a la persona mientras leas sus palabras. Así que ahí les van unas fotos mias... Before the shave during my first treatment of ICE - with a pillow that a lovely friend made especially for me./Esto es antes de la rapada durante mi primer tratamiento de ICE - con una almohada que hizo una muy buena amiga especialmente para mi: After the shave, with my removeable hair #1 and the cutest puppy in the world/Después de la rapada, con mi pelo removible #1 y el cachorro más lindo del planeta: After the shave, with my removeable hair #2 and a weird look on my face/Después de la rapada, con mi pelo removible #2 y una jeta extraña: After the shave, with a fab gree...

The hair fairy visited me, stole a bunch of hair, and left a big mess on my pillow, in the shower, all over my clothes, on the carpet, etc. It’s so gross…there’s hair everywhere. I’m shaving the rest of it tonight…damned mediocre fairy can’t even finish the job properly. I really thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal to me this time….but it totally is. It’s not much hair, but it was growing out all wavy and super cute, and I was finally starting to feel like it didn’t look like a cancer grow out…finally starting to think I looked pretty in my new skin. It happened a lot faster this time, in a couple of days really - I noticed a few hairs on Monday, and today, Friday, it’s coming out in clumps. I feel like what’s left is sort of just sitting there on the top of my head, and if I move too fast it’ll fall off. So, tonight we’ll just get rid of it, and by tomorrow I’ll either be sporting the scarf look or the blonde bob. It seems like since I’ve already done this once, it should ...