The real Day Zero post.

So, I didn't write about the actual Day Zero on Day Zero, sorry about that. It was a long and exhausting day for all three of us. The day started earliest for Jody. She had to be up at the SCCA at 7 something in the morning for a blood draw and for shots. Yuck. Then I took Mary for radiation at 9:30am. We were there until about 12:30. Jody came back up to the clinic around 11:30 and they started harvesting her stem cells a second time. After Mary got done with radiation, I took her home, put her to bed, and went back up to grab all of her prescriptions and get Jody. We got back to the apartment around 2:30ish and then Jody and I left and went to the store and got some groceries. We were out of bottled water and juice and other things like that, which will become a necessity in the next few weeks. We came back here and then I fell asleep for about an hour. Jody made sloppy joes for dinner and then we packed up and headed back up to the SCCA since we needed to be there at 5pm. Jody and Mary didn't plan on being there for long. I planned on being there for five hours. They were wrong, I was right (I also remember this from last time). Once we got there it took a little over two hours to run all of the fresh stem cells in. They were beautiful; I spent the better part of an hour looking at them. If you looked in the tubing, especially right close to where it was connected to the Hickman, you could actually see little clusters of stem cells. They looked like little snowflakes floating through this red stuff. And it was an image that isn't meant to be captured on film, so I didn't even try. Sorry for those of you who might go through the pictures on Flickr looking for it. And really, I could have tried, but that would have required flash and Mary's head really hurt. And I was too mesmerized at that point to pick up the camera again. Ask Jody. So, once we got all of the stem cells in, 6.6 million of them, Mary really started to feel the effects of the radiation. Nausea, vomiting, headache... It wasn't pleasant for her at all. Then they had to follow that up with some Magnesium since Mary's Mag levels have been trending down. Apparently that is one of the main side effects of one of the anti-rejection drugs that she is taking. Anyways, we finally got to leave around 10pm. YAY. And came home ready to sleep. The little bit nausea has prompted us to do the two hour med thing again; after all, I can say with confidence that I would rather wake up every two hours than deal with the alternative. That's about all there is to my life right now. Sleeping and waking up every two hours. Mary is pretty groggy from all of the meds but is doing really well besides that. Thanks for all of your prayers!