Is It January Yet?

Pants down, bra off. The nurse hands me a hospital gown and I tiptoe into the scan room barefoot.

The room is divided into two parts. The machine and I on one side. The doctor and the nurse on the other. We are separated by a screen that protects them from the very rays that I am about to be exposed to.

I climb onto the machine, lie down, close my eyes and wait for instructions. Hold still, hold your arms up, hold your breath. The camera of the machine starts rolling. It speeds up as though it were about to take flight. I, meanwhile, am thinking positive thoughts. Tumor shrinking thoughts. Normal cell activity thoughts. This time it has got to work out. After everything I've been through. After almost two years of hell.

I'm not ready for my world to fall apart again.

Time Flies

I stumbled upon this quote today.


"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." - Rilke


Day +67. Still going strong.

Introducing Alien

No hair to speak of.

Home Truths

In other words:

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying."

Some might say that it's a miserable day outside. It's raining and it's cold. 

But at least I woke up to see it.

Don't delay the happy.

The Odds

How do you deal with something that can't be dealt with?
How do you move on without remembering but without forgetting?
How do you create a new normal?

I wonder if I'm ever going to feel relaxed again. If there is ever going to be a time when I won't panic over a sudden itch, a fever or an unexpected pain and think that it's back. When will I get peace of mind?

50/50 sucks.

Blood Counts

I've been out of the hospital for two weeks now. Little by little I've gained some strength. Yesterday I was even able to go for a 30 minute walk. The doctors are controlling me every other day by blood tests though. My bone marrow seems to be in a shock mode still (what a surprise!) because my blood counts aren't that great. Bah. The worst thing is that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Come on platelets and haemoglobin, get your act together! I want to move on and lead a normal life!

DAY +16

I'm at home folks. They released me already on Tuesday, 13th September (DAY +13 post-SCT. Really early!), but since I've been napping away the past few days, I haven't felt up to updating. In fact, I've been too tired to even open my laptop. The fatigue is quite overwhelming. Something I've never experienced before. Something that is hard to explain, since it goes beyond the feeling of being tired. I fall asleep anywhere, ignoring happily both place and time. Climbing up the staircases is a challenge. Let alone taking a shower and changing clothes. Eating is unappealing since everything tastes like cardboard and I still get nauseous from time to time.

But all in all, regardless of everything, and unafraid of sounding like a cliché, I just feel so grateful to be alive. I've survived the "we're going to have to kill you and then bring you back to life"-method of curing that is the stem cell transplant!