Moving Along

Hi Everyone,

I am still tired all the time, but the doctors say that is normal. I am adjusting to the new bone marrow and that takes awhile. My hair is starting to grow back, still gray oh well.

Jamey & Cory are at the house finishing up I guess, they are keeping me in the dark. However they say I will be moving back in December 12th They are moving the furniture back in next weekend the 6th, then will tie up loose ends before I get back in.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving, just the 3 of us, but enough food for 6 or so. It was nice , Jamey made a great  pumpkin pie and green bean casserole.

Cory will post pictures of the house once I am back in, so we all have to be patient(that really means me).

Thanks for all the prayers.

Will be  in touch,

Joyce

It’s My Turn

Cory has been swamped, so hasn’t had time to update all of you; so since I am feeling better, I am going to take over, at least for a while.

I am about 40 days past transplant and the doctors say I am doing great. All of my counts have come up and even though they go up & down, I have been staying in the ‘normal’ range. I am on a huge amount of medication, which cause major fatigue and short term memory loss, but I can deal with that. I go back to the clinic twice a week for lab work & check ups. I have been blessed with all the support from Cory’s church. They take turns ntaking me to my appointments since Cory has been so busy with everything else(his work, the house & David). I am staying with great people who have opened their home to me. They have also welcomed Jamey since her situation has changed, so until our house is ready, we will both be staying here.

Will try to update on a regular basis.

Love to all of you,

Joyce

Long awaited update

Well, I was writing an email this morning and realized that an update on this blog is WAY past due!  Sorry about that!

Today, mom will be checking out of Emory and going to stay with some friends again for about a month.  We are really excited to see the end of the hospital stay season!  And, of course, she is really excited as well!  We will have to take her back to Emory about 3 times a week for the next month, but slowly and surely we are working back towards a normal life.  Please feel free to email her, hopefully she will have the energy to start writing back and connecting with you.  Exciting day!

Also, work on the house keeps progressing very smoothly.  Just found out that the people at Home Depot who are working with us have found some donated items that will help make the house that much better, and help stretch the $7K grant they gave us for fixing the house.  I will get some more pictures this weekend and try to post them next week.

Thanks so much for checking in and for being with us in this time!

Another set of updates

Mom called today and said that the doctor confirmed that the new marrow is starting to graft its way into her body!  This means that it is just a question of how high her white cell count needs to get to before she can be released from the hospital!  We are very excited and hopeful.

We also had a great workday this past Saturday at the house.  We got all the walls painted in the house, along with most of the trim.  The inside of the house looks so amazing now!  Also, we had some guys working on the back deck making sure it is secure and stable, and fixing some basic problems that have been affecting the upkeep of the house for years.  I look forward to posting pictures of all the changes soon!

Quick info update

Just a quick update for any who might want to visit, I talked to Mom for a minute on the phone yesterday, and her White counts have dropped significantly (which we knew would happen).  This means that in order to visit her you will have to wear a mask and whatever else they tell you at Emory.  Just be aware, one of the nurses can tell you specifically what to put on before you go in the room.  Thanks!

Also, for those of you who remember what the house looked like at the beginning, a few cool pictures of progress…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sit and Wait

Today is day 6 with the new marrow, and so far things are going as planned.  Mom is not feeling really good at all, but aparently that is normal.  She is having some bad headaches, and is sleeping a lot more.  As usual,  we are continuing to learn more about this as every day passes.  On the day of the transplant, we found out that her blood type will actually change with the marrow, and after a year or so, she will have to get all new immunizations.  Also, I learned in the past few days about what is happening during this process.  Right now the new marrow is in her body, and we are waiting for her immune system to die.  Once that happens, the new marrow can “get in place” and then start to produce good blood cells.  At that point it is just a waiting game until her white counts are up high enough for her to be safe to leave the hospital.  So for now she sits and waits, not feeling great, but working towards the end just like the doctors hoped for.

In other news, we found out Friday that we will be receiving a grant from Home Depot to help with paying for the supplies for the house project.  This is such great news, because we are at the point where we need a lot of the materials, and have been wondering how it might all come into place.  Hope to have some new pics up of the house later this week.  We have a large group of people coming this upcoming Saturday to help with painting and some other random needs at the house, so hopefully in just a couple of more weeks, we might be looking at a fully functional house!

T minus 2 days

Well we are two days from the big transplant day!  Mom has been back at Emory for the past few days and has started the Chemo again.  Right now her energy is still fairly high, and we are getting ready to watch the new season of Heroes!  Wednesday morning she will have the transplant, which will be a basic infusion, and then the next few weeks will adjust and be monitored closely to make sure there are no rejection issues.  We found out that after all is done, she will need all new vaccinations because her DNA will actually be different…weird!

The house project continues on, we were able to cut down some trees and big bushes at the house this past Saturday, and now we are basically at a place where we get to start putting paint and new dry-wall up in spots, and maybe in a few weeks we will be ready for flooring!  It is coming right along, and hopefully it will be done before the end of the college football season (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!)

Dad is still adjusting fairly well.  We hung out for a while today, and he told me about all the different activities he has been going to.  He is extremely excited to watch some Cubs playoff baseball in just a few weeks, and of course is ready to believe that this is THE year.  =)

Working towards the date

Well, I thought about apologizing to you all for being so slack with the updates as of late…but then I realized that no new news is sometimes a good thing, and I think that is true this time.

Mom is still resting and relaxing at a house with some friends.  She seems to be having a great time, although she seems to have found a new joy in sharing embarrassing stories about me to my friends…how nice.  =( Honestly though, she is doing really well, her white cell counts are up as high as they have been since the Chemo at the beginning of July.  She is at the doctor today, probably another appointment later this week, one early next week, and then we check her back in for the new round of Chemo right before the transplant.  She still wants me to try and take her to a restuarant at some point before she checks back in, and we are going to try and get her some warmer clothes.  (Her’s are currently in the very back of the storage container, holding everything from the house.)  We didn’t think ahead and realize she would need winter clothes before she got back home! 

Dad is still doing pretty well.  He is getting out of his room a little bit more and hanging out with people at the home, so we are really excited about that.  He seems to be leveling off a little, memory is getting a bit better and he seems to be a lot less confused.  I guess it just took a little while to get adjusted to Parkwood, but now things seem to be as good as we could hope for in that situation.

The house project is actually really starting to come along.  This past weekend we cleaned out the fridge, peeled wall-paper, finished cutting out some pieces of sub-flooring, cut the yard, and pulled lots of nails and staples still in the floor.  We are waiting to hear back from Home Depot to see if they are going to donate some of the supplies we need for the house.  This week or next we will be cutting down a lot of the brush on the side of the house and back of the house, and then going in to bleach all of the walls to kill mold and mildew.  We have a really solid group of people helping to make all of this happen, and have a few groups planning to come in sometime in October to do some work too, so hopefully things should really get going here soon.

Hope to post some more pictures soon.  Hope you all are doing well!

Progress!

Very good news to share today!  My friend Kim took mom down to Emory today for some labs and a transfusion, and I just got a call from her saying the doctor came to find them to let her know that we have a new donor!!!! Things are in place for her to check back into Emory on Sept 18th and then the transplant will be on the 24th!!!  High spirits today!  She will still be staying at a friends house for the next 2 weeks until she checks back in, and still has a few doctors appointments each week, but things are looking up!  (On another note, I taunted her saying she would never get to the end of Lost season 3…and she watched like 7 episodes on Saturday…too funny).

On another note, we got a ton of more stuff done at the house on Saturday.  It is now completely empty, some of the subfloors have been taken up, and we are starting to cut away at the bad walls that need to be replaced.  Things are really moving.  We are waiting to hear from Home Depot to see what supplies we can get donated and what we will need to purchase, but we are ever hopefully.  Thought you might want to see a cool before picture and then current picture of the livingroom…check out the gallery I posted.

Look forward to more updates soon!

Oh hell

Quick update, sorry I can’t give you much at this point.  On Tuesday we found out the bone marrow donor fell through, so now we are on the emergency list and are hoping for a new donor to come thru ASAP. 

This whole week mom has been feeling bad, but she is now running a fever, so we are back at Emory and they will be readmitting her sometime today.  She has a lot of congestion, a bad heachache, and they have her on anti-biotics right now.  She is feeling pretty crappy.

Will try to update more this weekend when we know more.