Waiting for Donor News

Time is passing & all is well. Ray completed his second round of chemo last week with no problems. He is still feeling fine & continues to get out occasionally & do things within reason. We are trying to be more careful of keeping our distance from folks that appear to be sick. That means there are lots of things we might have normally participated in previously, that we now need to shun away from for Ray's safety.

As I reported in an earlier post, three possible donor matches were found a couple of weeks ago from the National Donor Registry. Of the 3 possibilities, one has a date to get their blood drawn so we should have those results any day now.  The second has not responded yet and the 3rd is currently unavailable.  We are told that it can take weeks to months to get a donor; it depends on many factors such as being able to contact the donor and the donor’s willingness to proceed.  If this donor is not a match (there is a 99% probability he will) they will request more donors.

Now that we are nearing the end of February, we realize it's only a month until we had planned to shuttle Dad & Randy back to Indiana. Our hope was to be able to put Dad on a direct flight home & Ray and I drive the van (with Randy) home for 2 weeks so that we can get all their belongings home, swap vehicles & gather a few more things from our house that we would like to bring back with us since we now must remain here in Florida through the summer to get Ray's stem cell transplant accomplished. However we now realize that would not be a wise thing to do because of the danger involved if Ray would get sick while we're in Indiana. The doctor's have warned us that if he even starts to feel sick or develop a temperature of 100 degrees, they would want him admitted to the hospital & started on IV's to pump antibiotics into him immediately. And we know that should he get sick we definitely want/need to be near the Moffitt Cancer Center & his doctor here in Florida. Therefore, we have now decided to remain here in Florida & NOT attempt the trip home. 

Ray's older brother has graciously agreed to drive our car here from Indiana & Dad's van back to Indiana. Dad will fly home as he did last year.  Now we are crossing our fingers that Ray's dad remains well during his home stretch here. We don't want a repeat of last year when we had to re-schedule his flight because he landed in the hospital 2 days before he was due to fly home. But at age 94, his health is very fragile.

And so, if all goes well & as planned, Ray will begin his next round of chemo on March 6th. He continues to go weekly for blood work to monitor his levels. We remain positive & hopeful, taking each day as it comes & rejoicing in every day that he wakes & feels good!