Day Zero

I am so happy to tell you that Harriet is home, asleep in my bed (as last reported by Aaron awhile ago), and Samson is also sound asleep, here in my other bed. The day is done.

Harriet was amazing, of course, and went off to surgery under the influence of a miracle drug that made her think everything was a hoot. She had a rough wake up from anesthesia but was especially happy when Daddy came back to join me in the recovery room, and then seemed fully herself again when we finally got her up to the 10th floor to snuggle, all too briefly, in bed with me and Samson before his radiation appointment. In fact, she was so perky by 3 o'clock that she wanted to go to Samson's radiation with him, so the four of us traipsed through the hospital to the radiation area and Harriet charmed the nurses while Samson had his treatment. Everyone was required to admire the pink bandage on her arm, where her IV was.

I had hoped to feel celebratory when we got Samson back from radiation and started the process of infusing the new cells, but by then Samson was coming out of his sedation all miserable and fighting me trying to feed him, Harriet was exhausted, and the atmosphere felt hectic with Samson's yelling, Aaron trying to get organized to get Harriet home and me set for the night, and the nurses bustling around doing their monitoring and medicating that goes along with the infusion. So mostly I just felt tired.

Aaron took our rock star home, pulling her out of the hospital in a wagon, and I problem solved with the nurses until we finally calmed Samson with a dose of anti-anxiety medication.

And here we are, in our new phase of counting the days and waiting for engraftment, the day when Harriet's stem cells have found their way into Samson's bone marrow and start the process of making new cells -- including all the ones Samson never made on his own. This is expected to take two to three weeks, during which Samson is expected to become quite sick, but hopefully not too sick, because of what we have done to his body. Tomorrow is Day One.