Today I had an appointment to get lab work done. Results looked good to us, but we haven’t heard anything from the doctors. While I was there they checked my vitals and found my blood pressure to be really low and my pulse really high. So I got a liter of fluids and had to get an EKG. Everything seems to be okay and both blood pressure and pulse seemed to normalize before I left. The EKG needs to be read by a cardiologist, but there wasn’t anything that alarmed anyone.
A couple of days ago I got a package from the Siteman Center in St. Louis that contained quite a few cards that had arrived after my discharge. So those of you that sent cards, thank you, and I finally did receive them.
I’ve been promising you some pictures for awhile, so I thought I’d finally get them to you.
The first picture shows the room and equipment where I had my stem cells collected back in September. I was the first to get started, but there were five of us getting our cells collected, and there were nurses monitoring each of us, so the room was kind of crowded. The second picture shows me hooked up and the collection in process.

These next pictures are from the transplant stay. The first three show the room I lived in for 2 1/2 weeks, my "closet" and my TV.

The next pics are of the transplant. This first one is the cannister that held my cryogenically frozen stem cells.

This is the warming bath. The stem cells had to go from a frozen state to a pre-determined temperature before they could be transplanted.

The next two are the nurses placing the stem cells into the warming bath.

The transplant process, once the cells were warmed, only took about 30 minutes.

This last picture shows Alicea and J.R. shaving my head. My hair started falling out about 2 weeks after I got there, so I decided to just shave it. Tida's used to it, but I'm still a little surprised every time I look in the mirror! Haven't decided if I'll keep it shaved or not. If it was summer it'd be easier to leave it, but my head gets cold and it's not even winter yet!