Bone marrow biopsy done!

My pain-free bone marrow biopsy was done yesterday afternoon, and in addition to being pain-free, it was also quicker than they had told me to anticipate. After getting all prepped and setup, I received enough light sedation to put me slightly "under" while staying conscious enough to follow directions. I don't remember anything after they started "the juice", and I came to in the recovery room. They took bone fragments from the back of both of my hips, and actually aspirated a sample of my bone marrow from my right hip. After some Perkocet, Lisa drove me home and I spent the remainder of the afternoon sleeping off the anesthesia and painkiller. I have been a bit sore since sometime during the night, but have been able to manage it with Tylenol.

The transplant doctor has told me that I will need a bone marrow biopsy on a monthly basis after I'm discharged from the transplant, and after doing the previous 4 bone marrow biopsies the "old" way (pain-ful!), I am sold on this "pain-free" bit. It may mean I'll have to come to Dartmouth to do them, but count me in!

We have spent this morning unwrapping presents with Lisa's family, and it has been a madhouse with 4 kids that are 5 or under! JJ slept in our room with us, and woke up about 11:30 and couldn't/wouldn't go back to sleep until almost 2am, so he gave up on presents after about an hour, and is taking an early nap. Jilli is enjoying playing with her gifts and her cousin Mya, and we'll have Christmas supper together shortly.

We'll enjoy the weekend together - we can watch the Patriots game tomorrow night, and then we'll all go to Mom & Dad's church together Sun. morning. I'll return to Dartmouth on Monday for my PET scan, and then I'll be parked in front of a TV somewhere here on Tuesday for the bowl games, after which we'll return to Maine on Wednesday. There is much to be done when we get back home to get things ready to "move" back down here on Jan. 10 for the transplant.

My family!

This is one of our more recent family photos, taken at Thanksgiving 2007 in New Jersey.

I decided to start this new site to see how things look and feel here vs. my old blog site. We'll see how it goes.

Christmas is just 4 days away, and the shortest day of the year is tomorrow. Can't wait until we get some sun and at least slightly warmer temps to melt some of the ice. Love the snow, but could do without the ice. It's going down to single digits tonight, but they say we'll hit the mid-40s and get some rain on Sunday, which I hope will help melt some of the ice.

I'm going to try to post some pictures and see how that goes, so stay tuned!

BTW, if you want to check out my "blog archive", visit my old blog site