Originally, the transplant was supposed to begin at 11am in the stem cell center. Since she was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, it was changed to 1pm today in her hospital room.
We appreciated all of the wonderful comments about the pictures that I posted earlier today. Even one of the comments that a friend from Taylorsville made that "Mary Jo was a brave woman to allow me that close to her with a syringe in my hand." I agree that Mary Jo is a brave woman, but for more reasons than just that.
Liz, the nurse practitioner's, humor made everyone at ease during the transplant. The transplant took around 40 minutes. They get plenty of practice in the hospital's stem cell center. They have 30 rooms there. I only saw three vacant.
One of the people who was with us in the outpatient stem cell clinic also had his Day 0 in the hospital. We didn't get a chance to talk to him, but he must have encountered some kind of problem, too. Him and his wife were originally from Sellersburg, IN, not too far from Louisville, before moving to Oak Ridge, TN about 20 years ago. We pray that his Day 0 went as well as Mary Jo's.
One thing that I wanted to share with you. Before we came to Nashville this time, Mary Jo read a book our social worker gave us called "Autologous Stem Cell Transplants: A Handbook for Patients" If you notice on the cover of the book below, the girl is running from the darkness of a cloudy, rainy day to the brilliant light of a sunny day.
When Mary Jo saw the cover she said "that's what I will doing when we go back to Vanderbilt. On my transplant day, I will be running from a life of darkness full of chemo treatments, not feeling well, despair, and all of those other ugly things that cancer has brought into my life. I will be going to a life of light, and hopefully long remission. Full of hope for the future, full of doing things with our family and friends, some travel, and all those other things that we haven't been able to do since October 22 of last year when I was admitted to the hospital."
Ironically, the weather here in Nashville today fit that model of darkness to light. The morning started cloudy and rainy. Then, it cleared up just before Mary Jo's transplant. Stayed sunny for a few hours until the cloudiness and rain returned this evening.
As some of you know, Mary Jo is a quilter. She is in the process of finishing the quilt that is shown. As you can see, on the right side there are areas where more dark pieces and light pieces are clumped together than she had planned. Rather than taking the quilt apart and separating the pieces. She is leaving it as it is. Though not intended, the darkness to light message is conveyed through the quilt pieces. For that reason, Mary Jo has named it "Our Vanderbilt Odyssey .
Whether it be cancer or something else, we all have have darkness in our lives. But, the Light of the World is there to light our way out of that darkness if we have faith and trust the Way, the Truth and the Life. One of my favorite prayers is one written by Thomas Merton, who was a monk at Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky which kind of typifies my wandering and searching.
More to come tomorrow as Mary Jo gets the other five bags of her stem cells. I have many more pictures of today's transplant session. I will be working on a slideshow when I get a chance.
Thanks for continued prayers as we enter the recovery phase of this journey which we are told usually takes 100 days from Day 0 which would put it around August 14th. I am sure that there will be good days and bad days.
But, We will trust Him always for though we may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, we will not be afraid because we know He will never leave us to face our perils alone. Amen
One of my favorite prayers too. Praying that today goes as well as yesterday.
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