And Here We Go

I officially am "Closed" starting this morning. My bone marrow biopsy is at 11:00 a.m. I always choose to have sedation which makes a rather unpleasant procedure much more tolerable. When I had my first one, on July 11, 2008, at my six week breast cancer post-chemo follow-up visit, it was awful. A huge long needle is inserted through the hip bone to extract both marrow and a piece of bone. It is painful and the tugging sensation is enough to put me over the edge. Why be aware of it, why feel it all and remember it, when sedation is available? My hat is off to the troopers who can do it.

Today I add a new circle scar to the collection I am gathering on my hips. "Right or left?", they will ask. I think Left today.

BMB's naturally cause me a fair amount of anxiety because they are both icky as well as diagnostic of where my leukemia status is. It takes about a week to get all the test results in. The marrow is analyzed on a cellular and molecular level so there are a lot of tests performed on the samples. The tests have very fancy names.

So The Waiting Game begins yet again....

This BMB is in preparation for my One Year Anniversary of Transplant. Can you believe that?! I will write more about this later but I am officially preparing for my Anniversary Trip to Seattle in March. So in addition to the BMB, they will draw about 15 tubes of blood today for a zillion of tests that Seattle has ordered as well. So I am fasting today too.

So in addition to being officially "Closed" I am also officially "Nervous" and officially "Goofy" from sedation today and anesthesia with surgery tomorrow. Let the good times roll!