Thursday.

This Thursday, we will receive a list of benefits related to the bone marrow transplant that Mary's insurance will cover and the extent to which they will be covered. Please keep this in prayer. This will give us a much more realistic understanding of the financial commitment involved with this entire process. Thanks in for your prayers concerning this. You all mean so much to us. Also, to our family at Freeman: thank you so much for the birthday surprises for Mary this past Friday and for all of the gift cards we have received to help out with expenses this Christmas season. We wouldn't choose to be any place besides here at home with all of you right now. Thanks again.

As this blog is slowly becoming update central for everything that is going on with Mary right now, my personal thoughts will be contained in a new location. Thanks for following me there.

We're getting our game on.

Many of you know that Mary and Bill went over to Seattle last Wednesday to meet with the Drs. at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to discuss the treatment of her Multiple Myeloma. As Mary said in an email, "It was very stressful and overwhelming." Here's the verdict. Mary and I will head over to Seattle in early February. We will be staying there for about three months while Mary has an autologous transplant from her own stem cells. We will then come home for between two and four months and then head back to Seattle for an additional four to five months for Mary to have an allogenic transplant, hopefully from one of her sisters. The cost of this entire process is immense. To give you a picture, I'll crunch some numbers...The first (auto) transplant will cost something like $234,000. The second (allo) is around $311,000. HLA tissue typing to find a donor match, at $2000 a person, will be around $10,000. Housing in Seattle for Mary and I for eight months will be something upwards of $24,000; yes, housing in Seattle within a few miles of the SCCA is expensive. Mary's medical insurance is $500 a month...The medical insurance Mary has now has a $250,000 transplant limit. Mary will enroll in Bill's insurance in July, which also has a transplant cap of $250,000. So, if everything goes smoothly and as planned, we are still looking at needing upwards of $45,000 just to complete the transplants. That doesn't include housing or transportation or anything else. Total, we are looking at needing to come up with around $75,000 (And trust us, as the insurance decides what is billed as a "transplant service" instead of something else and as we get a more realistic view of living expenses in Seattle, this number is likely to grow). This pays for medical treatment above the insurance limits, copays, deductibles, prescriptions, housing, and transportation. In light of the overwhelming costs our family will be experiencing in the upcoming months, we are asking for the help of everyone we know. In the big picture, something like five dollars may not look like a lot, but in the little picture, it makes a huge difference to us. $5 from 100 people is $500, enough to pay for Mary's insurance for a month. It also buys a case of bottled water (Mary can't drink tap water for quite some time after the transplant). It buys a value sized pack of toilet paper or a container of Clorox wipes. It buys the fixings for dinner one night, or pays for a movie rental and a box of microwave popcorn when Billy and Joey come to visit (Mary won't be able to go to a theater). Five dollars doesn't look like a lot, but it has the ability to do a lot when it's in the right place. In anticipation of February, we are asking for practical things that will help us maintain two homes and help with travel expenses. Things that would be most helpful include gas cards, gift cards to fast food restaurants, gift cards to grocery stores or to department stores (like WalMart, Target, FredMeyer, etc.), and your unused AIRLINE MILES! A round trip ticket from Spokane to Seattle is around $125 after taxes. These tickets will be a hot commodity for our family as they cut down on travel time greatly meaning we will get to spend more time together and less time going back and forth. Thanks especially for your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement. Our family and friends mean so much to us right now.

Two books worth reading.

Because sometimes the only thing that matters is being together and because hugs really do fix everything.

The Gift of Nothing and Hug Time both by Patrick McDonnell.

The great surrender.

I have an admission to make. My sisters/friends/any one who's ever lived with me, have made many attempts to convince me of this fact, and over Thanksgiving dinner, I finally conceded. I am a picky eater. I realized this must be true when I looked down at my plate to find only a few pieces of turkey, white meat only, picked apart to be sure there isn't any funny skin or something, and some Stovetop stuffing. Yes, that's it. As I was surrounded with all of the traditional fixings for such a family dinner, that's all I wanted. And for desert? Not pie, but a rice crispy treat. And so my sisters must be right, or at least their words must be fueled by a grain or two of truth. If I'm going to drink juice, there's only one brand of one kind that I like, the rest are either too sweet or two bitter. If I'm going to eat veggies, it's a particular cut of one canned kind. If I eat fruit, it's usually left to green bananas. To be honest, I'm probably just a picky person. I don't like clothes to be itchy, and actually, Mary would probably tell you that I think everything is itchy (Really, I don't, just most things). When I go to sleep, I only want a certain blanket and pillow, and I like just those two things plus a sweatshirt to be washed in a particular detergent, one that's different that what the rest of our clothes are washed in; that way they smell like home. You could say I'm probably picky about my friends too. And I'm probably picky about a hundred other things as well. Too many to just list. And so I won't. I'll just leave you with my great white flag: I'm picky. Thanks for understanding.