A Monumental Moment

Tonight, Thursday December 2nd 2010 at 9:38 PM, Lora completed the reception of 9.97 million allogeneic stems cells donated by her brother Scott through a process called Apheresis.  Scott came up to Boston with his and Lora's parents on the previous Saturday.  His process began as an uphill battle, when the screening process revealed nodules on his thyroid and subsequently papillary carcinoma.   The friendly Dana Farber oncology team followed a methodology familiar to me in my olden military days as a combat paramedic.  That methodology is simple, "when in doubt, cut it out", and it works like a charm.  With that sacrifice under belt along with the promise of some future radioactive throat pills, he was able to pump out the 9 million or so T-cells in only a little over 6 hours.  Alot has transpired since my last post, and I will only summarize to bring this up to date.  The last session of chemo really worked well, bringing not only the blast (cancerous) cells to an all new low count of 10%, but also rebounded all of her good cell counts up into the "normal" range.  We were sent home to wait.  Scott needed to get his business taken care of, Lora needed to recover and prepare for the upcoming transplant date which would have been Nov. 5th.  The transplant was then pushed back another several weeks due to misbehviour on the part of some, better left unnamed lady parts.  It rhymes with shusmuterus.  And, once again the DF oncology team employs the age old US army medical handbook standard, "when in doubt, cut it out".  Uh-Oh, no more babies.  Oh well, our boys would probably kill a new baby anyway, trying to put it on a skateboard and pushing it off a vert ramp.  I won't go into detail about my masterful powers of persuation, Dr. Horowitz and the "morcelator".  Lets just say that we leave no stone unturned, and aren't afraid to matter of factly impress our opinions on others to get things done :-).  Lora was happy to hear that at least her ovaries are healthy.  To the point of this post, it's all in all been about 9 months, as Cecil pointed out, not 6 as I'd thought, since this all began.  Now we embark on a new path of what we've been calling the "other side".  The road to recovery.  Even in complete doubt and naivete, having no idea as to what the future holds, we both feel a sense of relief and accomplishment that we've made it to the pinnacle, apex of the slope if you will, point of transition from killing, poisoning, destroying, irradiating, etcetera, etcetera, to the "other side" and on to healing, recovery, growing, living, etcetera, etcetera.  We certainly couldn't have gotten to this point without the help and support of many friends and family members, but indubitably the most critical was Scott.  There really isn't a way to thank a person enough for what he's given his little sister.  That of course doesn't mean one can't try, it just can't be done properly.  Anyway, thanks to Scott and Amber, Lacey, Luke and Lana for giving the time, money, anxiety, stress, organs and blood.  It means the world to us and our boys.