Kit is in Minneapolis this weekend and will take Evan to his appointments. He goes 7 days a week right now. His red cell counts were down a bit yesterday, so he'll be getting some platelets today. Hopefully, that will get him back to where he needs to be to forge ahead.
Alyssa headed to Milwaukee and I came back to Milladore yesterday. A 7-hour trip for me! A stop in Eau Claire to visit Karl and several quick Christmas shopping stops added up to doubling the usual travel time. It's 198 miles from Alyssa's door to ours; I didn't bother to see how many miles I made that drive.
One of the things we've learned as Evan begins on his path to remission is that the National Leukemia & Lymphoma Society offers grants of up to $500 to help cover the some of the everyday costs of the living away from home for months. Parking, meals and travel expenses are some of the costs they will reimburse. We've always wondered where the donations go; now we know that they go to help real people. Evan saves all the parking receipts (an hour visit to the BMT clinic means $3.75 in parking fees). Judging from the number of people we see daily at the Clinic who are in one stage or another of transplant, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is helping an awful lot of people!
I plan on being home and working all week. Evan will be starting the stem cell collection process by the end of the week, if all goes well. That is an outpatient process that has him hooked to a machine that draws blood, removes the stem cells, then returns the blood. Those stem cells will be frozen to be returned to him in the actual transplant. From what we understand, there may be some discomfort at the site of the of the tube from which the blood is drawn while he is hooked to a blood washing machine for five to six hours a day. Monotony is quickly becoming Evan's worst enemy. I'm sure Kit will help to alleviate some of that this weekend!
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