Transplant at City of Hope

Well finally I made the decision to go to the City of Hope in Duarte. Duarte you say. Where the heck is that? It is in fact in Southern California right next to its more famous neighbor, Pasadena. My doctor there will be Ryotaro Nakamura with whom I have consulted in the last year and who has followed my case with great care. I feel very comfortable in his hands which really was the deciding factor in the decision.

The hardest part was knowing that I would be away from all of you.

I will go down in early September for some more tests---the story of my life. I will be joined by my brother Frank. Then in or around September 23rd (my 65th  birthday is the 22nd!) day - 9 begins. Everything BEFORE the transplant is minus. The day of the transplant is 0 and everything afterwards is plus.

For 4 days I will be an outpatient getting chemo. Then into hospital for more chemo followed by the BIG DAY---Day 0. I will stay in the hospital for around 3 weeks then I am discharged into my casita---little studio cottages on the grounds of City of Hope. While at my casita, I have to have a minder 24/7. And I will be there for around 100 days. A long time.

Welcome to the new blog!

Welcome to this blog which will be the main vehicle for us to keep you informed about my bone marrow transplant.

Huge thanks to Emily Jan  for creating this blog. And thanks too to Nancy Friedman , Ainate, Nora, and Eoin for naming advice. Bravo to Eoin for the blog idea.

There will be many people updating this blog including Jim, Ralph, Nora, Eoin, Ainate and Susan G – the wonderful communications director

Emily has very cleverly created different pages so you can be more informed or not as you wish. One of her pages is a Who’s Who----http://siletransplanted.blogspot.ca/p/whos-who.html----If you have a picture you would like us to put there, send it to me.

At the bottom left of this page you are reading, you will see:

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Click on it and they will walk you through how to subscribe. Subscribe just means that you will be sent an email any time I or someone else has posted on the blog. It doesn’t mean that you will be flooded with annoying emails and ads.

Also at the bottom there is a “comment” box.  Please do write here as I am certain that reading your notes will cheer me up immensely when I am reclining in various clinics and having my brow dabbed!

Pass on the url to others who might be interested.

And a huge, great, big, thank you to all of you near and far---my cheering section.  My days would be immensely harder if it weren’t for you. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

 – Síle