Friday Night.

Home from dinner with my aunt and uncle who winter out here, and just sitting on the couch feeling tired and a bit melancholy.

Had my (hopefully) last appointment with the nurse practitioner who's been checking up on me today.  Numbers look fine according to her, although they have dropped (platelets, red blood cells and white blood cells) below normal ranges.  She didn't seem concerned though, so I suppose I shouldn't be.  I have another blood test Monday before I see my doctor anyhow.

If things go as planned I'll be home Wednesday night.  It seems like a strange concept and place to me now.  So much has happened, and I've been in a bubble here a bit.  Getting back to the real world, so-to-speak, will be odd.  Even more so because Mischief won't be there -- this will be my first homecoming without the cats to greet me and I mourn that.  I'm sad beyond words that I won't be able once things settle down to kick back in my home office chair and have Mischief come bump my chin for attention.  Life really is emptier without him around anymore.

One advantage of just being able to focus my attention on resting and getting strong enough to get home has been the ability to tune out, temporarily, a lot of this situation.  As I ponder my life once I get home I realize that there's no real escape from this.  Just have to be hopeful that things go well and my benchmark appointments (60 days and 100 days post-transplant) tell us good things.

Random thoughts on a Friday night ... oh, since I've been here I've found out a high school classmate, an old friend and the guy who my college girlfriend cheated on me with all have been diagnosed with cancer since I have.  Before I was diagnosed I knew nobody personally who had it, and now I feel like everyone is dropping like flies around me. 

Such a strange thing to have this -- I try to explain it to people but I know it falls short.  The average lifetime experience, seemingly, just doesn't contain these puzzle pieces.  For which I'm glad, even though I know way too much now about what it's like mentally and emotionally (thankfully not physically yet) to live knowing you are being eaten alive slowly; as much as sometimes I wish it were easier for folks to empathize or understand what I'm thinking, in the end I'm glad they don't.  Much like those internet flicks you may hear about ("2 girls 1 cup", that WSJ journalist being beheaded, etc.) you can't un-see this particular world. 

You don't want to go here. 

I don't want to be here, trust me.