twenty is plenty

Well, well, well … It’s hospital day 20. It’s not Ramón’s best day, but we’re making the best of every day. When I’m faced with anxiety-provoking situations, I try to apply logic to make the uncertainty disappear. For example, I have been replaying last May’s induction chemotherapy, trying to remember what happened on what day, thinking it will be an indicator of how things go this time. I am wrong day after day. I want to accept that there is no making sense of cancer, but the detective in me still makes fruitless attempts.

Though I don’t know how much longer we’ll be here, I know that we should be able to go home (with many outpatient clinic visits) for several weeks leading up to Ramón’s transplant. Right now he’s tentatively scheduled to be admitted early to mid-April for transplant, but there are so many moving parts that I’m not getting too attached to any specific dates.

There are still tests galore before the transplant is officially green-lighted. For one, Ramón will have another bone marrow biopsy to see if this round of chemo got him back into remission. We believe it will, so I’ll just leave it at that. Also, in the next few weeks, Ramón’s sister (and donor) YuSun will travel from Michigan to Atlanta for a fun-filled day of testing.

Assuming everything checks out as planned and there are no surprises along the way, YuSun will return to Atlanta mid-April to gift Ramón with her stem cells. Then we’ll all live happily ever after as we endlessly skip through a field of vibrant flowers beneath a cloudless sky. A girl can dream.

There are a lot of components we don’t yet know, so I won’t take the time to venture into the what-ifs. Instead, I present to you a list of things for which we’re grateful:

• Every ounce of healing energy sent our way
• Generous contributions to help care for our dogs and fund other miscellaneous needs/desires
• Non-hospital meals that make the days more exciting
• A prayer shawl and blanket we received to give us strength in our fight 
• Achieving free parking status at the hospital
• People that have been inspired to donate blood and platelets or join the bone marrow registry
• Texts, emails, cards, and gifts that remind us we’re supported
• Having built a life so wonderful that this is difficult in the first place