Merry Christmas!
Monday, December 24, 2012
Engrafted Stem Cells!
I received a phone call on Friday with some news about my recipient. The stem cells have engrafted so she's making my blood cells now! She is doing well and was discharged from the hospital which is great news!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 7, 2012
Letters and Thankfulness
I'm currently on the west coast for some pharmacy conferences so I've been kind of out of reality for a few days and was surprised to see I had received a phone call from Lee. I listened to the voicemail and he had just wanted to check in because it has been about 30 days. He said he didn't have an update for me so my heart sank a little with disappointment but then he said he had a letter for me from my recipient! Obviously I called him back immediately and we chatted for a few minutes and he offered to email me a scanned copy of the letters (her husband wrote me one too!) and he's mailing the originals home so I can have them.
My recipient hand wrote me a letter and told me she had just gotten remarried and 24 days after she got married she was diagnosed with AML, which certainly changed their plans. Between the two of them they have 8 kids and 3 still live at home. She thanked me up and down and said that hopefully I'd meet them someday which absolutely thrilled me because I'd love nothing more but to be able to meet her and her family!
Then I read her husbands letter to me and I think I cried more through his letter because he told me what he had to watch his wife go through and that they couldn't find a donor. He said I was the only match in all of the US and Canada and if they couldn't find a match they were only going to do one more round of chemo and try some experimental medications. He told me that I saved his wife's life and I was their hero. This of course turned on the waterworks even more. I don't really feel like a hero, I really just feel honored to have been able to take part in this, but him telling me that means the world to me.
I've been really stressed out with trying to find a job after graduation and trying to figure out what I'm going to do and where I'll be within the next year and this just makes me realize how much more there is to life and what is truly important. I was able to spend Thanksgiving with my loved ones and will do the same in a few short weeks for Christmas and I couldn't be more thankful to be surrounded by people I love and by people that love me.
My recipient hand wrote me a letter and told me she had just gotten remarried and 24 days after she got married she was diagnosed with AML, which certainly changed their plans. Between the two of them they have 8 kids and 3 still live at home. She thanked me up and down and said that hopefully I'd meet them someday which absolutely thrilled me because I'd love nothing more but to be able to meet her and her family!
Then I read her husbands letter to me and I think I cried more through his letter because he told me what he had to watch his wife go through and that they couldn't find a donor. He said I was the only match in all of the US and Canada and if they couldn't find a match they were only going to do one more round of chemo and try some experimental medications. He told me that I saved his wife's life and I was their hero. This of course turned on the waterworks even more. I don't really feel like a hero, I really just feel honored to have been able to take part in this, but him telling me that means the world to me.
I've been really stressed out with trying to find a job after graduation and trying to figure out what I'm going to do and where I'll be within the next year and this just makes me realize how much more there is to life and what is truly important. I was able to spend Thanksgiving with my loved ones and will do the same in a few short weeks for Christmas and I couldn't be more thankful to be surrounded by people I love and by people that love me.
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