The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.
The boys are happily building their new Lego sets.
Guess what? Santa even brings toys for runners! Perhaps a review will have to be written after I try them out…
What are you dreaming of tonight?
Happy Holidays, everyone.
Winter is my favorite time to run. I love running after a snow, when everything is cloaked in white. It’s peaceful and quiet. The snow muffles sounds, even my footsteps feel lighter.
I love running in the cold, too. No sweat-fest, a winter run is spent trying to warm up my body. It’s usually a mile or two before I even start to feel warm. And when I do, it’s such a stark contrast. I’m running, in the snow, breath making frosty clouds, and yet I’m unzipping my jacket and removing my gloves. I love the feeling of warmth paired with with the chill of the air on my skin.
Once in a rare while, I get the opportunity to be the first runner on the path after a snow. It’s a bit surreal to be breaking the first footprints into the fresh snow. To think that I’m the first one to be out there is a pretty sweet feeling (and not one I get to experience very often). I’m running alongside the tracks of the rabbits and other critters, with not a shoe print to be seen.
It’s a run like this that make me remember just why I love to run.
What’s your favorite running season? Do you like the cold?
I know I haven’t been posting much lately, and I’ll probably say that again for a while. (Our LEGO team made it to State = another month of practices)
But, in light of what happened a week ago in Connecticut, writing about my successes, troubles and concerns just doesn’t seem important. I have boys that are in kindergarten and second grade. For the last week all I can do is think about how lucky I am that they come home every night. When I’m annoyed or frustrated with them, I remember that at least they are here to annoy and frustrate me.
There are 20 families who would give anything to be in my shoes right now. I know that, and it’s humbling.
What happened in Connecticut was senseless. Some have said unimaginable, but, sadly, it’s not that impossible to imagine. That’s part of what haunts me, imagining what those beautiful children experienced. But my heart keeps turning back, not to those children, but to their parents. I just can’t comprehend how anyone could look at a 6 year old and pull the trigger.
A week later, I still find myself with tears in my eyes if I think about it too much. I’ve avoided all the TV coverage, because I honestly can’t think of a reason why it would be healthy or informative for me to hear all the gory details over and over again.
I’m here planning for Christmas, wrapping presents (actually I haven’t started yet…) and thinking of the future. 20 families are looking at their child’s Christmas presents that won’t ever be opened (6 more families are probably doing the same thing for the adults who were killed).
My kids aren’t affected. They asked me what happened and I told them the truth, without embellishment or extra emotion.
“A man went into a school with a gun.”
“Did he shoot people?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he shoot any kids?”
“Yes, he did.”
That was all they asked. Later my kindergartner asked what the name of the school was, and where it is located. But that was all. I told them if they ever have any questions, to just ask me and I’ll answer as honestly as I can. I’m glad that they aren’t overly curious, although I’m a bit surprised at that.
Yesterday we had a big snow storm. The school let out a bit earlier than normal, and due to the weather I wasn’t sure when the bus would make it home. I was a bit anxious waiting for them to get home; I knew the roads were treacherous, having just driven home on them myself. I couldn’t help but think at the same time how incredibly lucky I am, how blessed my life, that the biggest concern of the day was what time my kids’ bus would get home.
My heart is whole, but it aches for those who are enduring the worst pain a parent could suffer. I can’t imagine anything as horrible as what they must be feeling. Each night I hug my babies a bit tighter, knowing that I can never predict what the next day will bring.
I don’t even know how to end this post. I can’t say something uplifting, like “there are 20 new angels in heaven.” I am sitting here staring at the screen, waiting for the right words to appear.
But there are no right words for this emotion. No way to right this wrong.
It’s just senseless.
So, folks, once again I have been fairly absent from the blog-o-sphere.
I have a good excuse, I swear! See this little guy? He’s a Lego Mindstorms robot, and he requires a lot of attention.
Why? Because he is going to a competition on Saturday! I am mentoring a team of 10 fifth graders this year on their FIRST Lego league team. We’ve been working really hard to get this robot finished, and to make him do the things that the team wants him to do. Our team is designing all the arms and attachments for the robot, as well as writing programs to make the robot accomplish tasks on the game table.
We’ve also been working really hard on our team project.
These kids blow me away. They are fifth graders, and their ability to solve problems and come up with innovative solutions is just incredible.
I can’t wait to go to competition Saturday and watch them enjoy the experience. They are going to do great!
Go Control Freaks!
Okay. Here we are, back to the story. Click Here to read Part 1.
If you’re just getting to this story, you might want to catch up by reviewing these posts (there’s a lot more you’ve missed, but this will give you the main points of the story). The complete list of posts is available here, as I’ve tagged them all with the same category name.
Here are the highlights, in order:
————————————————————————————————————————
When I left off on Part 1, I had just slept 10 hours in the hotel, getting ready for Day 5, the “Donation Day.”
Day 5.
We woke up early, knowing that we were going to be met in the hotel lobby at 7:00 am to walk over to the hospital for the donation. I got up and dressed in my best yoga pants (!), preparing for the likelihood that I would be in a hospital bed unable to get up or move for most of the day. We walked down to the lobby and over to Starbucks, where I tried to eat some oatmeal and drink some juice, but my nervous stomach wanted nothing to do with it. So I sipped on the juice, nibbled on the oatmeal, and tried not to think about anything. (It didn’t work.)
Promptly at 7:00 am, a nurse from the hospital walked into the lobby, picked up me and my husband, and also another man waiting in the lobby. It turns out he was coming in that day to donate bone marrow. The nurse walked him to another part of the hospital while we waited, and then took us upstairs to get ready. In a small room, I met with the doctor who would be overseeing my procedure. She then gave me my last two shots of filgrastim. Then, the nurse inserted a needle into my left forearm and drew a few more vials of blood, while the doctor worked on distracting me by showing me things out the window (she knew I was nervous I’d get sick since I threw up the last time they had drawn blood…). Then, using the same needle he had used to draw blood, he connected an IV saline drip and I was set.
We then walked downstairs, to the actual donation room. I’ll admit, it was underwhelming. Three beds lined up, each next to an apheresis machine. The apherisis machine is a machine that draws blood from a donor, then separates out the “desired” portion of the blood (in this case it is stem cells) and returns the rest of the blood to the body. I was justifiably nervous about this part. Having never experienced it before, I was not sure what to expect, or how I would react.
As the extra liter of fluids continued to drip into me, I made sure to hit the restroom one last time (this would be the second time since reaching the hospital, but it made no difference…I’ll explain later). Then the nurse in the donation room started to hook me up to the machine. In order to draw my blood, she had to insert another needle, this time in my right arm, inside my elbow. And oddly enough, I was completely calm.
Before I knew it, she had connected all the tubes, and she turned on the machine. I watched my blood flow up the tube across my chest, and felt, well, nothing. Really. I watched my blood flow out of my body and did not, for a second, feel ill. That alone amazed me.
After the process started, I knew I was in for a long wait. I was not going to be able to move my right arm until the procedure had completed – and I had been told to prepare for 6-8 hours in that bed. So, of course, about 20 minutes after the procedure started, I started to feel like I had to pee. I tried to hold it as long as I could, but they had already started the second liter of saline in my IV, and my body just can’t handle that much fluid. So, how exactly does one go to the bathroom when you can’t get out of bed or move your right arm? It’s quite lovely. It’s this fantastic contraption called a bedpan.
There you have it, folks. The bedpan was the most exciting part of the donation process. The most difficult too. Have you ever tried to put on your pants with one hand while lying in bed? Without moving the other arm? It’s almost impossible. And guess what? I got to do it twice. Apparently they were so impressed by my ability to NOT hold fluids that they continued to pump me full of them. Fun stuff.
The only other remotely exciting part of the process was when the machine would start to beep at me. You see, if it isn’t drawing blood well enough, it beeps to alert the nurse. Then she would come over, check the machine, and if it wouldn’t resolve, she’d have to adjust the needle in my arm, the angle of the bed, or the position of my arm. This happened quite a few times, and so I ended up almost flat on my back with my arm in a very particular position in order to make the machine happy.
The rest of the process involved me watching daytime TV, including shows I would never watch if at home. I also read most of an amazing book – Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. This book was so good that I read it late into the night the next evening and woke up early the next morning and read some more. I highly recommend it. As I was reading it, I kept thinking, “There is no way I could make up this story, and yet it’s true!” I promise, runners and WWII buffs alike (and I am both of those) will enjoy it. I literally could not put it down until I finished it, and it was a long book.
Although I prepared for 6-8 hours of donation, I was actually done in a little over 5. Surprisingly enough, my body was really good at making stem cells, so there were plenty of them to harvest. I felt great at the end of it all, too. I watched the nurse shut off the machine and get my stem cells ready to send to the patient. As she was labeling and sealing up the stem cells, she told me that immediately after she had them ready, that someone would be by to pick them up. Then, a person escorts them directly to the patient (the same person stays with them until they are delivered to the patient). They were to be given to the patient within 24 hours. This was when it really hit me that it had happened, and I cried a bit. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a lady came by to pick them up and get them on their way.
Before they took the stem cells, my husband took a picture of me with them. See that bag of cranberry-colored stuff on my chest? Those are my stem cells, ready to be transplanted. In the back of the picture you can see the apheresis machine.
After the donation!
After I ate some food and got my instructions, we were discharged and got back to the hotel around 4 pm. It was early, but oddly enough, after spending the majority of the day in bed, I still kind of wanted to lay down and rest. We did just that for an hour or so, but soon I felt good enough to go out to dinner with my husband and do some walking around.
The thing that struck me most about the whole process was that, literally hours after the donation completed, the thing I wanted most in the world was to have a chance to do it again. I know the odds are slim that I would ever be a match for another patient, but given the opportunity, I would not hesitate to do this again. There’s always a chance that this patient may need a second transplant, and I am ready to donate again for her.
The day after the donation I felt almost completely normal. I still had a dull headache and slight backache, but even that was gone by the following day. The doctor had warned me that due to the extra blood thinners they give during the donation process and the fact that platelets are removed with stem cells (they are similar in density so they are filtered out with the stem cells), I would be prone to bleeding and bruising for a while. So, I wasn’t allowed to shave or do anything strenuous for a few days in order to reduce the risk of injury.
Now, a few weeks after donating, I feel fine. I am back to running (although taking most of the month of November off has left me needing to rebuild my endurance), and I am having absolutely no side effects. It’s almost like it never happened.
So there it is. The whole process. My stem cells have now been in the patient for almost two weeks. I had a dream a few nights ago that everything was okay, and that she was already showing signs of recovery. Of course I have no way of knowing that, since I won’t receive any information about the patient for a while. According to the information I received, it can be 100 days or longer for the recovery process. So I will hope for the best, and wait for news of her condition.
Okay. I’m ready to tell the story of how stem cell donation works, and how it went for me. If you’re just getting to this story, you might want to catch up by reviewing these posts (there’s a lot more you’ve missed, but this will give you the main points of the story). The complete list of posts is available here, as I’ve tagged them all with the same category name.
Here are the highlights, in order:
————————————————————————————————————————
The first phase of donating stem cells is to get daily injections of a medication called filgrastim that increases the body’s generation of stem cells.
Needle queasy? If you’ve gotten a flu shot, you’ve survived the worst of it. These are small injections given into the skin, so the needle is small and the injection is pretty painless.
There are five days of injections – four days leading up to the donation, and then a fifth injection the morning of the actual donation. DKMS contracted a local home nursing service to give me the injections.
The medication is designed to trick your body into thinking it’s sick, so it will release more stem cells into your bloodstream. Therefore, the frequent side effects are basically like coming down with the flu. Headache, body ache, fatigue, and the like. I had been told that these symptoms would slowly increase, probably not bother me until Day 3, and then become the worst on the last day. I was prepared for this, and figured I could deal with fatigue and aches and pains. I am a runner, right?
Day 1.
On the first day, a Thursday, the nurse came to me at work. This was the only day I would see this nurse, and I was a bit thankful for it. Don’t get me wrong, she was completely professional and very nice, but I think she was a bit thrown off by having to draw blood for a CBC and give me injections at my work. She wasn’t prepared to draw my blood, so she had to go out to her car and get the equipment (at least she had it with her, though!). Then, she gave me all the filgrastim in a single injection, although they had sent equipment for two separate injections. This caused a slight “knot” in my upper arm – I couldn’t feel it but she mentioned it when she finished the injection. Then, after the injection, although she was supposed to stick around for a half hour or so to make sure I didn’t have an allergic reaction, she left immediately. I looked at the EpiPens that came in my kit and prayed I didn’t need to use them, and went back to work for a while. Thankfully, they never needed to be used.
That evening, I was “single parenting” as my husband had something at work, so I took the boys out for dinner. Usually, I wouldn’t take them out for dinner on a school night. But I didn’t feel like cooking, and I had promised them we could go to the library and then out to dinner. So off we went. I found myself feeling tired and a bit cranky. Neither is that unusual for a Thursday evening, especially when trying to take three boys out to dinner at a restaurant with one parent. 3:1 definitely puts the odds in their favor. Plus, we got there early (we eat early with three young boys), and the kitchen wasn’t quite cooking yet, so the waiter informed me that the options were limited for dinner. So I ordered a black bean veggie burger.
When the burger arrived, it was definitely NOT a black bean burger. It was the color of, well, a “flesh” colored crayon. There were no black beans in it, nor were there any pieces of anything I could define as veggies. I’m not sure if it was straight soy protein, or what, but it wasn’t very good. I got the boys home and into bed, and, feeling tired, went to bed early myself.
Day 2.
I woke up the morning of the second day feeling awful. I hadn’t eaten since that dinner the night before, but I woke up and was bent over the toilet by 6:30 am. I spent the next few hours alternating between falling asleep on the couch, and running to the toilet and dry heaving. I got the boys on the bus (I don’t work on Fridays) and turned on PBS for my 2 year old. When I realized I had slept through most of Curious George without realizing it, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to keep him home. Luckily, my mom had planned on stopping by that morning to check in, and when she arrived and offered to take him for the day, I gladly accepted. I headed straight to bed and passed out.
I slept a few hours in bed, then was finally able to get up, move around, and eat a bit before the nurse arrived for my second injections. This nurse, was, in a word, FANTASTIC. She was a bit concerned at seeing me so sick. I told her how I hadn’t expected to feel bad on the second day, and she agreed that it didn’t seem right. But, we went ahead with the injections after checking through my symptoms on the daily injection form. I was able to eat, at least, and I was starting to feel better.
This time, the new nurse split up the injections into two separate injections, one in each arm. This made each of them smaller, and it was really easy. She had experience with stem cell donors, and she said that she always gives the medication this way, because “there’s no need to pump it all into you at once!” I loved this nurse. She’s a Hawkeye fan, and it turns out she knows some of my husband’s coworkers, and I know her husband through work. Small world.
A second two hour nap, and I woke up feeling, while still tired, much better. I spent the evening with the family and actually felt almost normal. I was disappointed though, because I had been scheduled to help present a “big check” to Project Renewal, one of the charities that the Live Uncommon Race Team had supported this year. I was looking forward to seeing all those kids, and was so sad that I couldn’t make it. But nobody would have wanted to see me in the state I was in…
Day 3.
Day 3 arrived, and the nurse came early for my third injections. I felt infinitely better, and the nausea was completely gone. This was weird because symptoms of filgrastim are supposed to increase each day. I’m pretty sure now that what I had was either a stomach flu (there was a short-lived bug going around) or some weird food poisoning that hit 10 hours after eating. Either way, I felt better and I wasn’t going to complain.
I pretty much spent the day normally. I got a haircut, went out to eat with my boys, and just had fun. I was a little more tired than normal, and I had a little nagging headache, but it was easily tolerated.
Day 4.
Day 4, Sunday, was the day that my husband and I had to travel to the donation site (if you remember, I had to travel to the hospital because there wasn’t a DKMS hospital close that I could get into in time for the patient). I had my fourth injections bright and early (around 8 am) and we packed up and got ready to go. We dropped off all three kids at my husband’s mom’s house (they were ECSTATIC at the prospect of three nights with Grandma!) and we headed to the airport.
Travel was uneventful, when we arrived at the airport a driver was waiting to pick us up. It’s always such a surreal feeling to walk down to baggage claim and have someone holding up a sign with your name on it.
The driver drove us to the hotel, which is literally across the street from the hospital, and we got checked in. The hotel was really nice, and the bed was comfortable. What more can a girl ask for? Especially since I was exhausted and was ready for bed… My symptoms on Day 4 were still relatively mild (I was comparing everything to how awful I felt Friday morning). I had that nagging headache, which was right at the base of my skull, and I had lower back pain that felt like bad menstrual cramps (sorry, guys, you’ll have to take my word for it). It was tolerable. The worst part (which wasn’t that bad) was that occasionally I’d get up and feel my back throbbing or pulsing. It was weird and definitely did not feel good.
This hospital was on a college campus, so we walked a few blocks to an open restaurant for dinner. It was perfect because they served beer (for my husband, I couldn’t drink during this process), had football on, and were open and serving food. We each ate a sandwich and then headed back to the hotel, where I promptly went to bed and slept for 10 hours.
Day 5.
I’ll continue with Day 5 in my next post. To be continued…(check back Thursday!)
In the weeks leading up to the donation, I found that people who heard that I was donating stem cells were invariably going to respond with one of two statements:
“Wow. I’ve heard that is incredibly painful.”
and a variant of:
“You’re such a saint/It’s awesome that you’re doing this/I could never do that.”
I’ll address the first one in a later post where I talk about the actual donation process. (but let me say on the record, it’s NOT painful at all).
But let’s talk more about that second set of statements. I think if you’ve read my blog over the last few months, you probably understand that my motivation for doing this is simple. I act using one guiding principle. To do what I would want someone to do for me if they were in my shoes. It’s easy. If my mom was sick with blood cancer, and someone was a match for her, would I want them to donate? Of course I would. If one of my boys were sick with leukemia, and someone out there could save his life, I would give anything for that person to do it. So it never even crossed my mind to ask if I should do this. There was no doubt that I would. Because someone, somewhere in this world is sick, and I alone have the ability to help her. That patient, and her family, deserve this chance at life.
And honestly, I have a hard time believing that more people don’t feel this way. I’m stunned when someone says to me, “I don’t know how you can do this.” Or, “You’re so selfless.” Or, “I could never do that.” I just want to scream at them, “YES YOU COULD!”
But I don’t scream (what good would it do anyway?), I just restate my guiding principle. I tell them that I am only doing what I hope someone would do for me if the situation were reversed.
And perhaps I’m a bit biased, having seen my best friend go through this process and not find a match. I’ve seen the pain and anguish that leukemia causes. I’ve been in the hospital next to my friend’s bedside as he went through chemotherapy. I watched him endure through two years of treatments, only to find that, for him, there was not going to be a cure. I carried his coffin to his grave. 14 years later, I still cry when I think about it. So yes. I suppose I am biased. But I have every reason to be.
Nobody ever should have to go through that. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through that experience.
So there it is. There’s my motivation.
And yes, you could do it too. I really believe all of you could do it.
Note: I decided to split up the story of my stem cell donation into several posts. I’ll have a post to cover the pre-donation process (the injections of the medication to increase my stem cell count), and a post will cover the actual donation. Look for those to come later this week…
I won’t be hurt if you haven’t even noticed I’ve been gone.
But I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to post. Here are just a few of the things that have happened:
1. Not much running. I have been barely scraping out a few miles a week, and it’s really hurting my performance. Today was the first day in weeks I had a good run, and it was only 5 miles. I remember a few years ago when I was wishing I could run 5 miles, so I’m happy I did it, but still. A month ago I was ready to run a half marathon. Oh, and speaking of that…
2. Not running a half marathon. Remember the Tyranena Beer Run? The race I was most excited to run all year? Yeah. No babysitter = no race. I think this is part of the reason that #1 occurred. It’s hard to get motivated to run when you’re bummed about missing a race.
3. 5th Graders. I’m mentoring a FIRST Lego League team that is getting ready for their first competition. Two evenings a a week, gone. (But it’s a blast!)
4. Holidays. Well, one holiday – Thanksgiving. But I swear it’s thrown me off schedule.
5. I donated stem cells. Definitely a blog post coming on this one when I have more time to type. One of the best experiences of my life.
I’ll be single parenting for a few days this week while my husband is at a conference, so I may actually have more time to blog. Look for some posts coming (hopefully) this week. I have so much I want to say…
Running Unplugged 