My first post

In an effort to consolidate and reduce my social media presence, I'm starting a blog to keep up with friends and family. For those of you who missed the post, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in May during a three week hospital stay in Altanta. In the subsequent months, I moved from MD to NC (planned prior to the diagnosis), and started output treatment at UNC. Throughout this process, I used a website called CaringBridge to keep my people up to date on my health progress, and I will continue to do so until I'm fully in remission. At that point, I'll archive my caringbridge site and continue on with this one.

I chose today to as my inauguration of the blog because I checked into a UNC hospital where I'll be spending the next two to three weeks getting an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant. The ASCT isn't really a transplant. My oncologist said he tells students that it's really just high dosage chemo with stem cell rescue. On Monday, I spent the day connected to an aphaeresis machine that pull about four million stem cells out of my body. Those stem cells are currently frozen, waiting for me to get a large dose of melphalan this afternoon. I'll get those stem cells back on Friday, and that'll be it - transplant complete. There rest of the process is waiting while my blood counts drop and come back up. I'll be inpatient throughout the process so that I can be in a controlled environment while my immune system is the most compromised and so that I can get blood transfusions and antibiotics as needed.

The room here is nice. After the small room at Emory, it's almost palatial. I have a view of the Starbucks next door, a mini-fridge, and access to a gym and pantry in the unit. The unit is for stem cell transplant patients (and maybe other immunocompromised patients?), and there's a apparently a HEPA filtration system right above my bed. 

I've seen at least 10 staff so far, with more on the way, so I'm going to cut this short. I just made a fool of myself when the chaplain came by and asked me about myself, and all I could do is stare and ponder how to answer that question.