April 14, 2004

Main Page • John's Journal (2000-2003) • CLL Information • Contact John • Seattle Cancer Care Alliance • MD Anderson

Quote in a card given to me by my friend Carolyn:

"There is a purpose in what you are walking through, and God would never
allow it if He could not keep you close to His heart and use it for good in
the plan He has for your life."

It's almost 11pm and I have to leave at 6:45am for an 8:15 Bone Marrow
biopsy at SCCA in Seattle. So I'll probably keep this kind of short.

Michelle took a half day off at work today so she and her mom could be with me during the Arrival Conference conducted by the attending physician here at SCCA. The attending physician is the leader of the Blue Team·the quarterback if you will. The arrival conference was very informative. We learned a great deal more about the procedure. I will talk about the
mini-transplant procedure in more detail in upcoming jounal entries, but it's too late to go into detail right now. My doctor did share the good news that the new donor from Australia is a perfect match and if everything
goes well during this pre-transplant work up she will be the one. I also learned that there is a funny catch to this transplant. Since my donor happens to be a 37 year old female, my blood and bone marrow will become female too. I have been assured that no other part of my anatomy will be female. Why do I feel my friends will have a lot of fun with this?
Just an interesting fact I found out today:
I am one of 8 to 10 patients being transplanted by the Blue Team. There are five other teams in the clinic. In other words, there are over fifty transplants going on here at SCCA at the same time. The SCCA performs
approximately 400 transplants a year, for people from all over the world. Amazing.

In addition to the arrival conference, I had three other appointments in the clinic today.

I had x-rays taken by Huddle in the Oral Medicine department. They have to make sure I don't need any dental work because they don't want to have to do dental work once I begin transplant. My immune system will not be strong enough.

After my dental x-rays Michelle and I met with Roke in Financial Services just to go over insurance billing procedures and other finance related issues. Roke was a super nice guy. He explained things so clearly and
reinforced that they are here to help us with any financial questions we might have. The total cost of the procedure is $256,000 dollars. Praise the Lord my insurance came through to cover the procedure. We are still working on getting Premerra Blue Cross to cover my housing costs. It is mandatory to live close to the clinic and downtown housing is quite expensive. I am very happy with our apartment, however. It will be a nice refuge to recover in, much nicer than having to stay at the hospital the whole time. If all goes well, I may only have to spend one night in the hospital. All my other treatments are done as an outpatient. I will need to live here in Seattle for the next three months, however, so they can monitor me closely. If I have a problem they want me within five minutes of the clinic.



From the Financial Services appointment it was off to have a few more tests done by my nurse, Antonette. If a patient is over 40, they have to get an EKG to test the heart. Since I am 41, they had to hook me up. My EKG test was excellent. Nurse Antonette also needed to take a couple cultures. The reason for conducting so many cultures is to test for the presence of any unusual bacteria or fungus. They don't want to have any surprise infections once transplant starts. If they did find an unwanted bacteria or fungus they would treat me to eliminate and/or significantly reduce the risk of a bacterial or fungal infection.
I continue to be impressed at how nice everyone is at the clinic. It is exactly how you would hope it to be. If you have to be here to go through an unpleasant procedure, you might as well have pleasant people taking care of you. Talk to you tomorrow!

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