THE UPDATE: The Road to Transplant

I’m all checked into room 2144 at Chateau Robles for my last R-ICE chemo in prep for transplant at City of Hope.  It’s been great having my sister visiting/helping for a few days.  I should be home by [late] dinnertime tomorrow.  What happens from here:

• 7-10 days of recovery at home after this R-ICE round
• est week of 4/14: 3-7 days of stem cell harvesting at COH (drive there each morning…all done outpatient)
• A week or so of “vacation”
• est week of 4/28: 1 week of pre-transplant high dose chemo at COH…I will be a wreck, probably not much worth visiting.
  • Supporting Tracey/homestead much appreciated during this week and recovery weeks to follow, when Tracey will be spending the bulk of her time at COH while Ben is at home.
• est starting 5/5: 2-3 weeks of recovery (with my collected stem cells re-infused) at COH…healthy visitors will be OK
• est 5/26: Back home to finish healing and get back to my life in remission again!

THE MUSING: What to believe? 

For most every seemingly well-reported medical study you read you can find another that has conflicting results. For every piece of doctor’s advice, you can find another equally intelligent-and-informed doctor who doesn’t agree.  You can go on discussion boards and blogs of various flavors and origins and find religious fervor from survivors who have done their own research and had their own experiences.

So, while we expect something different, more “scientific” and definitive, for serious medical decisions, in essence, we’re in the same place we are with other decisions: gather input, decide what you believe and who you trust, and just make the best decision you can.

Decide who has vested interests, discount their opinions.  Understand when an individual opinion might be statistically insignificant and potentially not relevant to your situation. Realize that there are hundreds of variables and the one thing someone somewhere thought helped them overcome cancer might not have anything to do with the real cure(s).

Is there such a thing as “informed faith”…because in the end, we don’t have the fully-vetted facts that can lead to a deterministic decision.  Even the most scientific-minded of us must have faith…even if it faith that our imperfectly-decided course of action is the best one for us.

WHATEVER

• It was sure great having Tess and Jordie home for spring break!
  • Tess is back for her homestretch (final quarter before graduation!) and Jordie is back to some exciting courses and planning out the path to his degrees (it looks like with the 23 units in APs he came in with and the heavier-than-average load he’s been carrying, he can get BS and MS in 4 years without killing himself)
• Ben’s new release of the EVTripPlanner is meeting rave reviews and his donations continue to roll in…and he’s off to the State Science Olympiad competition in Anaheim on Saturday, 4/5.  Not sure I’ll be up to the trek – sure sucks having this cancer get in the way of life (temporarily).