Dear Friends,

I've may or may not have mentioned that I'm going to be donating bone marrow stem cells next week.

I've been on the donor list since 1990, and my number came up last month.... I know nothing about the recipient - other than he's a 62 year old man.

The process is fairly straight forward, but takes almost a week to accomplish...

Thursday, 6/12 I begin a 5 day series of hormone injections which will cause marrow stem cells to leave my bones and migrate into my blood stream.

then, on monday, they strap me in a machine that will take blood from my left arm, filter out the stem cells, and then put the remaining blood back into me via my right arm. This process takes place over 2 days and will be 4-6 hours/day. The main drawback of this is that I'm going to have needles in each arm, thus rendering my arms immobile. thus making reading (my favorite passtime) nearly impossible. They do however let you bring in movies to watch. so... last night I went and picked up the 6 DVD boxed set of the New York documentary aired a couple years ago on PBS' The American Expirenece. ahhhhhhhh Ric Burns.......

What I've been told to expect from the process is that the hormone injections will cause my bones to swell and I will likely be getting head and body pains for the duration of the week. there might also be some side effects from the preservatives that they have to put into my blood to prolong the shelf life of the stem cells. There is also about .1% chance that the hormones will stimulate the overproduction of red blood cells in my spleen (I've not figured that one out yet) that would cause the spleen to rupture. This is closely monitored.

My schedule is thus:

every day until monday, at 11AM, I will be getting a hormone injection. This should only take 1/2 hour per day. Then on monday and tuesday, I will be strapping myself into this machine starting around 1PM.

I've been trying to contain my work schedule over the next 5 days to minimize most of my responsibilities in case the head aches are overwhelming. But somehow, I'm going to try and see at least 4 plays this week.

This procedure has a 30-40% chance of prolonging this man's life. If it works, they don't tell me. If it does not, they don't tell me either. Part of me is glad to be able to have some distance from emotional involvement, but for the very reasons that I've been a donor all my adult life - I'm already deeply emotionally tied to the hopes of a positive outcome. Frankly, I've no idea how I'm going to cope, as the whole thing is paradoxically wonderful and *extremely* lonely.

I would ask that you all bear with me and my moodswings during this emotionally charged event.


Earth Out.