Everyone,
I spoke to Kristina last night, and she is on track to be admitted to the hospital this afternoon, Nov. 5, around 4 p.m. She sounds good and determined, but under no illusions about what lies ahead.
At this moment, all I know is that she will be on the 8th floor of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. She will be able to receive visitors, and hopes to eventually be online. For details like room number, current condition and phone/email status, stay tuned here.
Also, we will be posting charts of her various blood counts, once those start coming in, and once I clear the technological hurdles between hither and yon.
Here, generally, is what lies ahead for the next week or so: she'll start getting doses of chemo on Tuesday, a medication called busulfan. She takes this orally, and she suspects it will soon make her quite sick. One of the things it can do is give people seizures, so on Monday afternoon she will take three rounds of dilantin, which is an anti-seizure medication. Apparently, after three rounds of this, you get some pretty bad vertigo.
The scheduled date for the transplant is November 13. There is a chance she will be out of the hospital by the end of the month -- assuming everything goes just right -- but even then, she will be confined to home for a period of months, she will have to avoid contact with the sun for a year or more, she can't swim, and in general her life will be dramatically altered.
There will also be many, many bills to pay, so please consider taking a moment to make a donation for her medical expenses via the link to the right.
One final note for now: We told you about Trish Dicomo in the last post. She and her husband have been very supportive and helpful (they even posted a response to the last post) as Trish battled the same condition with the same treatment program as Kristina. Trish Dicomo passed away on Saturday. Kristina asks that we all send prayers and energy to the Dicomo family.
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