Radiation Starts Tomorrow

Everything is packed. I'm prepared for my 6+ week stay at the LDS Hospital.  We'll be there tomorrow morning at 8.  It will be a unique opportunity to practice self control.  My goal is to be as pleasant and relaxed as possible regardless of physical or emotional distress.

Negativity is the reason I haven't posted recently.  The last time I started writing a post, which was Thursday, I had to keep erasing paragraphs because they were such downers.  After 25 minutes I gave up.  You've got me back today.  I'm going into bone marrow transplant feeling happy and free.  I need that to last for the rest of my life.

There isn't a lot of update.  The last week was a bit rough.  The kepivance has been unpleasant.  Kepivance is a drug that stimulates the growth of epithelial cells.  They've administered it over the past several days.  The purpose of the drug is to thicken the lining of my mouth and gut.  The hope is to avoid severe mucousitis.  Anyhow, it has thickened up all of the epithelial cells in my body.  My fingers are thick, my face is red and breaking out, my tongue feels like it's been covered in lard, and food has lost all flavor.  This is all better than bad mucousitis, where a patient will simply be given lidocaine and morphine for weeks while they're fed through a central line.  I'll include a picture for you here at the end of this post.

I've had good days but I haven't been able to recognize them, not with the attitude I've had.  I'm working my way back to a more pleasant perspective but that's been a slow process.  I'm almost back.  Just in time to be laid low by radiation.  So you may not see a lot of posts from me in the near future.  However, Emily has told me that she will post here to keep you all up to date.  I wonder if she'll allow for a bit of dictation on my part.

There is a thought experiment that I was performing earlier today.  The idea was consider what you would do if you only had five minutes left to live.  The answer came to me immediately and I acted on that answer, despite the fact that it was only a drill.  My answer was to express my love to those who are most dear to me.  Jonas was the closest, so I went and told him that I loved him.  Love, in its many forms, is the only message and impression I hope to leave behind when I'm gone (not that I'm going anywhere).  

My actions have too often been self serving in such a way that my love for others isn't reflected.  I don't have time to regret that fact.  Instead, it is simply my hope that I can change for the better and leave a more admirable impression.  I realize that I've been on the quest to improve in this regard for 24 years.  Here is to another 24 years of trying.

Enjoy the picture of the day, this one isn't pretty.  I'm rendering it in a smaller format.  I appear oddly chinless, almost perfectly oval, and generally acne-ridden.  I'm sorry if you were trying to enjoy food while viewing this photo.  That is a rash, not a suntan.