This Machine Killed Cancer

This is part quick update and part “what the heck is a transplant anyway??”

Wowie - so we’re in the hospital (as am I in solidarity/caretaking) for what at first seemed like a very long time. Now it sorta seems just like the rest of the past year. Shayne’s hooked up to an IV. I’m drinking way too much coffee. We both read and watch movies and talk about everything we’re going to do once we don’t have to live in this fancy hotel with doctors. Trust us, it’s going to be a lot of amazing and awesome adventures.

Shayne is doing really well. He’s on day three of six of chemo treatments. He’s getting a cocktail of four chemo drugs. I won’t bore you with the long technical names, but they refer to it as BEAM. He’s had two of the four before, both of which made him incredibly sick last time. This time, thankfully, not so much… maybe he’s just acquired a high tolerance for chemo.

After his 6th day of chemo he’ll get his stem cells put back in to rescue his bone marrow, otherwise what little bone marrow he’d have left wouldn’t be able to produce enough blood & WBC & platelets to return to a normal state. He wouldn’t recover from the effects of the chemo.

From today on we’ll probably be in the hospital for another 3 or 4 weeks, then after Shayne gets discharged he’ll need a 24/7 caregiver for another 3 weeks. Then it will be about another 5 months before Shayne is completely recovered, possibly longer if his doctors decide that he needs more radiation.

That’s a lot of days, but compared to the days we’ve already finished, it’s not so much. While I was writing this I realized that Shayne has already gotten 16 rounds of chemo that took 34 days, he’s gotten roughly 5 MRIs, and he’s spent over 100 days in the hospital. So really, what’s another couple of weeks?**

**Really the next couple of weeks are the scariest part of this whole ordeal and we actually need help and support, we’re just really bad at figuring out what that is… good thing that y’all are awesome and call, write e-mails, make food, deliver locopops, and generally just figure it out. The weird flipside of this is that we don’t always have time/energy to write back to emails or call back (I’m personally not a big fan of the phone) so this blog is the way to say thanks in one fell swoop. We know that’s not very sincere or awesome, but trust me, when Shayne gets better, we’re going to find you and give you a big hug.