Journeying

   It is Day +49 since my transplant.  The doctor continues to remind me that the recovery is a marathon and how I should not expect to see rapid-fire results.  My appointment yesterday with the bone-marrow transplant team went well.  The lab results are good.  Everything is on target and the medical professionals are pleased with my progress.  My remaining symptoms are all within the range of typical.  Some highlights from the labs include:

Potassium -- 4.7 (up from 4.4 two weeks ago)

White Blood Cells -- 7.55 (up from 4.19 two weeks ago)
Magnesium -- 2.0 (up from 1.8 two seeks ago)

Hemoglobin -- 11.2 (up from 10.2 two weeks ago)
Neutraphil Absolute -- 2.98 (up from 2.11 two weeks ago)

   These are all the good numbers.  About the only questionable stat is my weight.  I am down to 153 pounds when I should be in the 180-pound range.  Food is still not tasting good and so I need to look at food differently and just keep putting it into myself without expecting that hunger and taste will motivate me to do so.  I am constantly tired and even just walking up a flight of stairs gets me winded to the point of having to sit down.  This whole process is truly a journey.  I have very little power to speed it up at all -- there are circumstances and ground rules surrounding this experience that make the recovery process different from any other health challenge I have been through.
   When I first began this adventure back in late November, I was encouraged to start this blog and even somewhat flippantly called it, "The Journey." That label is now more true than ever.  This could never be called, "The Errand" or "The Inconvenience" or "The Time-Out." It has truly become a journey.  Like some journeys, I am always trying to move forward but don't always know where I am or how much longer it will take.  It is a bit like what Merriweather Lewis and William Clark might have gone through while recruiting men for their explorations out west in 1803: "We are going West, boys. We don't really know where we are going. We know the trip will be over when we find an ocean, but we don't know how far away that is.  We are simply asking that you trust us for no reason whatsoever.  We will most likely be gone for years.  We don't know what we will see or find or experience, and there is no guarantee you will ever make it back.  Don't expect safety and comfort.  In fact, there will be dangers, hardships, cold, hunger, illness, but we just don't know when any of that will happen or where or how bad it will be.  Basically, we don't know what you will experience along the way.  We do know it won't be fun.  Wanna sign up?"
   The stories of journey have encouraged me in the past, from backpacking stories to old fur trappers' journals to "against-all-odds" survival tales.  One of those stories I have read before and have been reminded of lately (because my son is currently reading it) is The Only Road North by Erik Mirandette.  Four guys...four motorcycles...9000 miles...from South Africa to Egypt.  So much is outside of their control as they experience this trip.  Even as they revel in their arrival in Cairo, their final destination, they are met by a terrorist's bomb that rips their worlds apart and forces this journey to continue. But the journey is now about regaining health and confidence and faith despite the death of one of the four travelers.
   I am at the point of my journey where my life is not in jeopardy so I don't wish to be overly dramatic.  But I do understand the need for patience, for perseverance, for not worrying about tomorrow, for being content despite uncertainty.  We keep going.  I now understand a bit more about not knowing the future.  I have a better understanding about not knowing just when this whole experience will come to a conclusion and then what that conclusion will look like. It doesn't package up neatly that way at all. "Once day at a time, sweet Jesus..." is still the truth I strive to assume and one I must continually learn to cherish and embrace.


   (By the way, read the book.  The Only Road North by Erik Mirandette -- copyright 2007. Published by Zondervan Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI. 49530)