Transition

2/16/07 Day 37

Today was a bit of a unusual day for us, MDA had no appointments and their were only a minimum number of housekeeping chores (laundry, cooking & dishes) for me to take care. Ann's vision continues to get better though she still needs the steroid drops. She spent most of the day watching TV shows she downloaded from iTunes. Normally I despise Apple/iPods/iTunes by default and would use other means to get TV shows online but, we have enough bad karma right now. So being legal can't possibly hurt in that department.

Two shows have caught her eye so far: Ugly Betty and Heroes. She is enjoying Heroes particularly. This is a good thing considering that both shows have compete seasons available on iTunes, it means that she will have lots of entertainment. Which is actually pretty important for her right now. So much so that I may need to look into getting a larger drive for her laptop to store more shows on.

However sitting and watching TV with her is just a reminder that Ann can't leave the apartment because of the effect of the chemo. Even with her WBC count up it can be risky for her to be around people who may be harboring some bug that will take her weeks to fight off. That in turn could delay her next scheduled round of chemo, while the infection is brought under control and in turn give the cancer a chance to reassert itself.

Ultimately it means that Ann's world has telescoped down from being able to walk out of the front door of our 2 bedroom house and go anywhere at all, to being able to safely exist only in a one bedroom apartment or in the MDA clinic and hospital complex. This disease has cost her freedom and independence. Even with a BMT that may never change.

Tomorrow we have blood and lab work int he morning. If Ann's counts are down then we will most likely spend the rest of the day in the transfusion clinic getting blood or platelets. I'm betting on platelets as they seem to be the portion of Ann;s blood that is slowest to recover after chemo. After which we'll begin getting ready for the start of round 3 on Tuesday.