Today marks the day when one year ago, I received my stem cell transplant. I remember very clearly the day when we were all waiting for the small bag to arrive that was a dusty pink goo that was late.  I wondered what would happen if there was a wreak or the dropped it and it splattered on the floor, what would happen?  Luckily, none of that came to pass and the anticlimactic transplant started when they screwed the line from the bag into my port.  And it worked,  a couple of days later one night I started running a slight fever and that’s when the new cells had decided to make their home in my marrow and get to work building  my brand new set of cells.

It has been and continues to be a rollercoaster ride; the recovery from a bone marrow transplant is much worse than the cancer in the first place, except for the fact that with the cancer, death was involved. I've had 4 other trips to the hospital for when my body didn't want to cooperate with my new blood (and one trip for covid).  It seems that every time I go into the hospital I come out with something new:

Steroid induced type 1 diabetes

Afibrillation of my heart

pneumonia (twice, second one was covid pneumonia)

Sepsis (almost went down the tunnel of light that time)

another round of sepsis and a big ol case of graft vs host disease (new cells attacking old cells)

covid 

But I’m still alive.  A year later I’m still pretty weak, take a ton of meds, stay bloated because of steroids, have to avoid contact with the sun or the graft vs host disease flares up, lost 2 full inches in my height, I get tired pretty easily, and have skinny chicken legs now.  But I’m still alive,  and thankful for it.