14 days while her blood counts recover from these two rounds of chemotherapy.
Our hope is that the “graft vs. host disease” that the doctors are attempting to aggressively induce will indeed occur sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We all have a holiday wish, right?
It’s also hard to get used to so much sympathy and empathy and sorrow regarding her illness from our friends and family. But we’re pretty unbowed and unbroken here on the inside of the honeymoon suite at The Hotel.
Jenn is not feeling sorry for herself.
Jenn is not disturbed about her image or her baldness or her looks. (If you know her at all, you’d know that she’s really not very vain in that way. As she wrote on her Facebook page: “That’s the least of my worries.”)
Matter of fact, last time she pretty much insisted on walking the planet bald when she was out of the hospital. It was wild seeing how men reacted publicly to her to her baldness last spring. Some would come to immediately embrace her; many (or most, anyway) couldn’t even make eye contact with her without their eyes welling up with tears. It was complete avoidance.
Kind of like me with blood.
The first time around, her being proudly and boldly bald attracted all kinds of interesting people. Last June, just days before her transplant, we took a walk on Federal Hill on a beautiful Sunday night and encountered two different leukemia journeys on the hillside. Jenn has become friends with both victims – a 20-something gal from Virginia and a 5-year old boy who she visited on the 2nd floor last week as his journey to safety continues. They all compare leukemia notes, just like the folks in the hallways here at The Hotel.
And, so far, they’re all survivors!
We’re all doing the best we can. We’re holding up well and are very appreciative of all of the love and hope and support.
In general, we’re trying to treat this like our own personal 9/11 – meaning we’re trying to do as many things that are “normal” as possible.
She’s watching some TV she likes. She’s reading when she can and interacting with friends and loved ones. I went to Phoenix last weekend to watch the Baltimore Ravens while her dad stayed with her for a few days. Her mom is visiting this week. Her sister came to town two weeks ago.
At some point, you need to try to have some semblance of normalcy – even if it’s in some small way every day. The journey is simply too long to put life completely on hold and to wallow in misery. Honestly, writing and doing radio and watching sporting events have been my way of passing time because that’s all we’ve got, really, is time.
For #JennStrong2, this is all about comfort.
We’re waiting for this infection to calm down in her appendix.
We’re waiting for her counts to come back.
We’re waiting for her donor to save her life again.
Then, we’ll be waiting for the super rash – the one There Goes My Hero founder Erik Sauer calls “the worse combination sunburn, rash and pain you’ll ever experience.”
Keep the faith!
We are…
And for my sake, try to have a bloodless Halloween!
There’s enough blood down here at The Hotel for all of you…
