The bone marrow transplant
As the capper to what has been quite a busy week, I have my bone marrow extraction tomorrow morning Friday Mar. 20 at 10:30 am here in China (Thurs. Mar. 19 at 8:30 pm in Calgary). It looks to be the biggest of all the procedures I will undergo while here. I cannot eat for 8 hours before and can’t drink anything for 6 hours before – thus I am planning on having a big dinner tonight! 
Then I will go under a general anaesthetic and they will siphon 200 ml of bone marrow from my sacrum. Freaked out yet? I am. Well, not so badly. All the other procedures have gone extremely well, literally without any problems at all, so I have every confidence that this one will too. And as my Mom pointed out, it is probably a good thing that I will be out cold for this one – I don’t think it would be much fun to be awake. Then I am instructed to stay in bed for 24 hours afterward. I can say with some certainty that I am looking forward to this after the week I have had!!
As to the week, in short, the lumbar puncture went extremely well and was in fact even easier than getting an IV. They laid me down, put a saline IV in my arm, gave me some IV valium and I was relaxed and mellow and half asleep in a few minutes. They wheeled me in to the operating room, and alll I felt was a little poke in my back, and what felt like 3 minutes later I was out in the hall way flirting with the nurses! I had to lay on my back for 6 hours without lifting my head, but I was so relaxed and tired from the valium that it went by pretty fast. A touch of a headache when I got up too fast was the only effect, and a bit of stiffness in my spine, all normal.
Anyway, another delicious dinner awaits, so I must go.
2 comments March 19th, 2009
