-1

Well, if the last couple of days haven't been exciting, today was... We left for the clinic this morning around 6:40am. I know, talk about some sort of crazy hour of the morning. It wasn't like two of us weren't up half the night at any rate anyhow though (at least Mary still sleeps...). Jody had a Mahurkar Line (don't click if you get squeamish easily!) put in at 7:30ish this morning after having a rough blood draw (the no eating and no drinking thing required for the surgery to put in the line sure doesn't help that). After the surgery was done, Jody got to eat some string cheese, juice, and crackers and got to have more growth hormone more shots, Yuck. Mary held her hand this time though. Then we went and ate breakfast at the little place in the clinic. After that...Let's see. We went up and sat on the 6th floor for like an hour. There are good chairs up there and a nice view. Mary and Jody sat in the recliners and I sat in the rocking chair. We must have all looked like little old ladies (or like our Mama taught us well), we were all embroidering. Then it was finally getting close enough to 11:30 for Jody to go check in for Apheresis (that's what it's called when they take your blood out, run it through a centrifuge, separate the plasma and stem cells out into two separate bags, and then stick the rest back into your body). That took a couple of hours. After I got over the initial shock of, "Oh wow, this is really happening!" I was pretty okay with it (most of you probably know I'm not great with needles or blood). And at the end of the day we ended up with a nice bag of cells, 2.59 million so far. Liquid Life. It's a beautiful bag. I nearly cried just looking at it (please don't ask why I get so emotional about this whole thing because I just don't know). And I can't do it justice just telling you what it's like; you'd have to be here walking through this with me. Then we all came back here and slept. Well, I spent a substantial amount of time on the phone with the nurse trying to figure out this hydration thing for tomorrow. Mary is supposed to have completed a bag of hydration before she starts radiation. Which means that it needs to be started at about 4am. Technically the day she is case rate. Which means that we have to get it from the clinic's onsite pharmacy. Except they won't give it to us until the day we turn case rate. And unfortunately, the pharmacy doesn't open until 8am. However, after a few hours of calling back and forth, the nurse convinced them to release the pharmacist to release the bag to her so she could give it to me so that I can give it to Mary at 4am (it will take 5 hours). Then they can bill it to the insurance tomorrow, the day we go case rate. AH! The horrors of this insurance nightmare. Anyways, today is over. Tomorrow will be longer. Thanks for your prayers! We love and miss you all so much. The comments, cards, and emails are so much appreciated!