Day 9 and no fever

Cherry trees in the quad are angstroms away from blooming

We made a road trip over the weekend to Trader Joe's.  Stopped at UW campus on the way to walk around. 

Though Heidi's neutrophil count is flatlined, we took a trip out to get some groceries.  It isn't too risky since she isn't touching door handles or shopping carts previously touched by virus-laden spit-spewing microbe-sloughing germ-expelling bacterium-disgorging microorganism-pitching (yes, I use a thesaurus) plague-regurgitating pathogen-exuding disease-discharging (surprised it took this long to get to that one?)  epidemic-pandemicing (I went too far, didn't I?) people.  Yeah, we've all been there, haven't we?

Team Heidi Ho at The Big Climb

I didn't write anything for a few days because nothing monumental happened.  With Heidi, anyway.  I could tell you all about my Half Marathon and stairclimb, but you didn't sign on to this to read about me, did you?  <damn!>  BTW, in the photo to the right, Cody has mega-cooties which is the reason for my off-putting body language.  See the above thesaurus exercise for his current condition.

It turns out that when I don't write, Heidi's friends all start calling her.  So that's all for today's edition.  Bye.

Okay, I do have some photos to share, and do need to point out that it is Day 9 and Heidi is not in the hospital.  That is a little unusual, so they say.  She did spend the one night there to receive the transplant.  Her room on the 8th floor had a real nice view of Lake Washington, Husky stadium and the Cascade Mountains.  The internet connection bandwidth there can push 20 Mbps.  That's on wifi!  Upload and download, thank you very much!  And that's just for visitors!  It is nice being on a major hub.  Hmmmm, maybe I should let Heidi push the shopping cart next time.  Did I mention only a 4 msec ping latency?  Can't touch that within a couple decimal places here with the DSL line at PGH.  But if she can make it to the weekend, the graft bone marrow should start to generate blood cells and her immune system should start picking up.  The docs say her immune system should go non-zero starting, perhaps, Day 13 (friday). 

Things are not looking rosey on the hair front.  Lots of hair in the shower every day.  May be head-shaving time again in a few days.  The previous hair cut garnered 3500 viewers.  Oops, just checked and it's up to 3700.  Wanna be 3701?  Point your video browser here.

Want to see what a typical morning is like?  No, not the frowing up part.  The morning blood-draw part.  See the video with the ever-efficient vampiress Kelsey here.  Oh, Heidi wants me to say that she didn't really throw anything up.  Just gagging and heaving.  Everyone feel better now?