"What a difference a day makes" Maria Grever & Stanley Adams

Wishing I was gone

Going home

Simon and Garfunkel

Neutrophils (ANC) have doubled in just one day to 2200.  All other tests are stable. This is excellent news. I have now have had an ANC greater than 500 for 3 days in a row, a sign of engraftment and a sign it is safe to go home, tomorrow.

I will be driven back to the clinic only twice a week. I was expecting daily checks. I was expecting a very short leash of only a few hundred yards, specifically to the on campus cute and sterile cottages. Maybe I get to go home because of my benign course and my surfeit of red blood cells and platelets. Not likely to need an urgent transfusion or develop a rapidly progressing infection. I am probably safe 45 minutes away from City of Hope when it is not rush hour. It could be double or triple that at the wrong time of day or if there's a sigalert so I will simply plan on not getting sick any time to be safe.

It does seem strange that I go from blood tests twice a day on Monday to twice a week on Tuesday. No more antibiotics. No more antifungals. Am I really that different in 24 hours? Of course not. It is just hospitals run by routines and outpatient clinics run by different routines. Will I miss nightly bleary eyed perusals of lab results drawn at midnight and put on my night stand at 4:00 AM? I am an info junkie, especially when it comes to my blood, but I think I can wean off twice daily check ins. Thank G-d for the PICC line, which I get to bring home and my wife gets to care for,

Tomorrow will be a busy day of meetings with I don't know who yet: pharmacy staff, the dietician, the PICC nurse, the discharge planner, the clinic staff? They told me it may be late in the day before I get home, which is fine with my exhausted wife who is arranging last minute cleaning of our furnace filters and ducts. Can't go home without all my ducts lined up. (SORRY!)

My friend Joe, a fellow CLLer has loaned me an air purifier. The contents of my office and desk have been dusted or put in large plastic bins with labels such as "junk from top left drawer". Like a crime scene, certain non sterile parts of the house, including the kitchen will be cordoned off from my perambulations for the time being. The pets are off limits. No plants. Curtains are gone in many rooms to be cleaned. No junk or dust bunnies anywhere. I am not sure I will recognize the place

But it's home. sweet home.