Here we go again....

Dear all, As most of you know by now we're headed for another transplant starting today. This time I am getting someone elses stem cells, a young white man is all we know about him but I am hoping he will turn out to be Ailis's future husband and am willing to go through all this if thats what it takes for Ailis to meet the man of her dreams.... Ailis, you know you can count on me. He is anonymous for now but I am told that in a year I will be allowed to correspond with him and thank him for basically saving my life. (as well as find out if he's tall enough to date Ailis).

I know some of you were curious to know exactly what he gets out of it and basically it's nothing, no payment of any kind and he has to take time off work to have his stem cells collected. This is done in a pretty easy way, they spin them off his blood over a couple of days and then pack them up and fly them to me bit like a donor transplant. I then have them infused in a pretty straigtforward way through my central line - this happens next Thursday so technically the 12th of July will be a new birthday for me. Its also the day my mum and dad get here from the UK and my sister Jen moves into her new house so it's gonna be a busy one!

Once I have his stem cells we wait and hope and pray for a solid and quick engraftment of his immune system into me. I will get a whole new blood type which is cool along with who knows what else.....All being well his immune system will recognize any cancer left in me and kick it's ass back to cancer land pronto! It's alot more complicated than that and there are some potential bumps along the way but hey, but if you want to know more there is always Google.... My father banned me from googling a long time ago, (threatened to cut off my hands to be exact)....Just remember, statistics is just fuzzy math, right Bridget..... ;-)

Today I was admitted and given a new central line which has three lumens meaning three places they can hook up three different kinds of crap to me - anything from antibiotics to chemo. It's delightful and as I write I am attached to something that looks about the size of a small European car and has to be dragged behind me wherever I go... Deep Joy. Tomorrow chemo starts for 5 days then Wednesay is a day of rest (ha ha) and Thursday I get my stem cells. The good news is that we scored the mack daddy of all rooms on the 8th floor! It's twice the size of our last one and Tom actually has a pull out leather couch this time. I need to take a rain check on visitors for now but all deliveries of tabloids such as In Touch, Us Weekly etc are gratefully received. You all know about my secret addiction to all things celebrity.

Hope this schedule puts you all in the loop as Tom and I would be lost without you. Your constant care, help, love, good thoughts, prayers, ju ju and whatever else have meant the world to us over the past 18 months and we just hope you can all stick around for the happy ending. I will try and blog every day but in my absence there will be some guest bloggers back by popular demand. You'll just have to check in to see who.....Please pass this on to any and all I may have forgotten and anyone you feel might get a kick out of the ramblings of some old English bird with cancer.

I figure if Paris can do 23 days and Alan Johnston can do 16 weeks I can hang out here for a while, I mean really, who wants to ride the subway in July and August anyway?

All my love
Bev
xoxox

P.S If any of you have skype or webcams you can always call me up - my skype username is beverleyself and I'm not sure how the other ones work but I have a mac laptop with a built in camera. I got to talk to Archie on the webcam tonight and it was pretty cool.... we miss the doodle....