Wednesday +77 (10:30 PM)

Again, not much to report today. With no hospital visits and no blood counts this makes for boring reading. Of course that's a good thing - from Jackie's standpoint!

Jackie had another good day today. She felt almost normal. She only had a little nausea today and very little back pain. She was able to do an extra 5 minutes in the gym today. Her total was about 25 minutes on the treadmill and stationary bicycle. Considering she was doing a little over an hour in the gym at home before the transplant this is good. Before the transplant she would do an hour in the gym and about an hour of brisk walking. The docs told her to get into the best shape possible before the transplant. She was able to devote a couple of months getting ready.

Today we packed more suitcases. I filled up the trunk of the car with stuff in preparation for being allowed to head home. There is NO WAY we will get all the stuff we brought (and bought) into the car for the return trip. Scheduled to stay behind? Brand new (and barely used) vacuum cleaner, mops, brooms, garage sale bicycle, and lots of grocery items. It is probably about $300-400 worth of stuff. It doesn't bother me a bit to pay $1100 for a tiny bottle of pills but it really hurts me to leave behind my brand new $49 WalMart vacuum cleaner. I would ship it home, but it would probably cost $59 to get it there. Oh well....

We had our usual hospital visit today for a growth factor shot. That only takes about 45 minutes. Most of that time is taken up by the standard questions, "What is you name? Can you spell your name? What is your clinic number?", etc.

Tomorrow we have an early clinic appointment for blood work and growth factor shot. We then have a late afternoon appointment with the transplant doctor. We certainly hope he says, "Go home for the 4th!" We are packed and ready! If he doesn't turn us loose we are BOTH going to be disappointed!

We now have neighbors next door. Most of the time we have been at the Oakwood we have had nobody else living on our floor. We had dinner with the building manager last Saturday night and she said they were about 25% occupied during the winter. I think she was being generous; I would guess 10%. With the arrival of summer the number of people living here has increased. The building is probably 50-60% occupied. The people next door are expecting to be here for 5-6 weeks. They are from West Virginia and she is a Mayo patient.

Until later...

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN