Day Three

10:00AM

Anxiety is not a stranger today. It seems terribly counter-intuitive to do a dose of cytoxine after such a beautiful bag of bright colored cells are set before us.

Claudia came and talked a long while - as usual she boiled the issue down to a few good common sense sentences.

She reminded me that this is a mismatched transplant, and that with the stem cells there are lymphocytes which will create unbearable GVHD (Graft vrs. Host Disease)if we don't stop them. This is how we are going to stop them.

So the new immune system can work against the tumor and not too much GVHD against me.

She then smiled and said, "Don't worry, David is taking care of things."

I told her I think a lot, too much - if we have given them enough time? If we have enough on board? On and on and on. Told her I need to turn myself over to the process.
She said, "William, don't think, just jump."

Here we go.