I Have Returned

Yes, I'm still alive. And no, I haven't quit blogging. Busyness followed by laziness has been the reason for my absence.
The short summary of the past few months is that Mike had his transplant and did very well. He's home recovering and, although he still has a long way to go to get things totally back to "normal" (whatever that is), things are looking up.
Now, backing up, it was wonderful to get to enjoy the holidays together, but Christmas still ended up being a holiday with a loved one in the hospital. My grandpa took a spill and broke his hip a week before Christmas, so it was a very different and whirlwind holiday this year.
Mike caught the awful stomach bug going around during the holidays, so his admission to the hospital was delayed by a week. He finally went in January 8 and thus it began. The chemo started that same night, and for the next few days things were business as usual. The following Tuesday is when it started to hit him, but he still came through like a champ. He was given the donor stem cells on Friday, Jan. 16, and while he had no real reaction to the stem cells, the chemo, meds and everything else started hitting him at that point. Those next few days were terrible. He was drugged up and mostly out of it, but when he was awake he had terrible headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and an all-around miserable feeling. At one point he was vomiting so much (and he had nothing in his stomach to throw up) that he told me he felt like he was going to hemorrhage. I was in a panic. Another time during those few days he told me it would be better to "go to glory" than to endure this. I barely ate during that time, and I only left his room to use the bathroom or to leave for the night. Luckily I had gotten a hotel room down the street for several nights, so I didn't have to make the 45-minute drive home every evening.
Around the early to mid part of the following week, Mike was starting to become more alert, and was trying to use the pain meds a little less, but it was still at least another week before he really started to seem more like himself.
Once his physical state started to improve, the mental toll of being locked up in a room started to show. He wanted to get out of there so badly and didn't know how he was going to stay sane. But soon the light at the end of the tunnel started to shine.
The hospital stay for a matched-unrelated-donor (MUD) transplant is typically four to six weeks, and they told him he should plan on about five weeks. Mike was released four weeks and one day after his admission. He was the poster boy for transplants.
The day Mike was released, my co-workers were throwing a surprise baby shower for our manager, whose wife was pregnant with their first child. Luckily, I got the call to come get Mike that morning, and got to skip out on the shower. I had to bring my baby home from the hospital.