First Week

I have been in Seattle for 6 days now
with a friend who is having a stem cell transplant.

They take her own stem cells out...
pretty much kill everything else going on in the body...
then put the healthy stem cells back in.
Pretty amazing.
I'm getting quite an education.
And a healthy respect
for the people going thru this.

There is a home you can stay in.
We're now in the Pete Gross house
after being in the SCCA House for a week.
Each house has a rooftop garden.
The SCCA House is like a motel.
But they have kitchens downstairs
for patients to use.
After you are done...everything
has to be sanitized.
We decided it wasn't really worth it!
And luckily, her grandma lives in town
and sends new meals every day!
The Pete Gross House is like a little apartment.
Kitchen and all!
But Grandma still sends food every day.
Bless her little heart!

SCCA stands for Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.
They're world renown
and I can see why.

They have their business down to a "T".
They treat the patients and caregivers
very well.
There's nutrition centers everywhere.
That's a little mini kitchen with all
kinds of snacks...for free!
(And not always nutritious...which is a good thing)

We spent the first of this week
waiting for her blood counts to go up
so they could begin to harvest her cells.

She has to be at the clinic every morning
to have blood taken.
after that, she waits an hour
to find out what the counts were.
Then she had to have a shot
to help her counts go up.
Then usually she had to have
blood or platelets put in.
This takes quite awhile.

When her counts were good,
it was time for harvesting or collecting.
That was a celebrating time!

So the first day of collecting
she was at the clinic for 12 hours,
way longer than we thought.
We had to move into the new house,
so I had to run all over getting keys,
packing up stuff, going back and forth
between houses.
I also managed to leave my purse
on one of the shuttles.
Almost had a major 
meltdown at this point.
But the shuttle guy brought my purse back.
I almost kissed him and gave him all the money in my purse!
(Not really on the kissing, and giving him all the money
in my purse would actually be the opposite of being grateful!)

Once we got in the new apartment
things smoothed out a little.
Her uncle brings us stuff from the store
as well as the cooked meals from her grama.
He has a jaguar...
I got to ride in it today,
and get to ride in it tomorrow.
Pretty much the highlight of my week...month...year...
well, you get the idea.

We have managed to do a couple of fun things.
We went to a little coffee place called Row House
and had a Iced Hazelnut Mocha...and...
we finished a 500 piece puzzle in about 2 hours.
Yes, we are a wild bunch!

We are both struggling with the fact
that we are without our families
and find we don't have a lot of drive
to do anything that we normally like to do.
She has an excuse to feel that way...I don't.
But its getting easier
and we are sure to spend plenty of time
in God's Word and we are praying
every day before going to the clinic.
She's very brave
and treats every day
as if she's going to the office
for a day of work!