Back in the Hospital

We were re-admitted to the hospital yesterday to try a new medication. While I feel like a bone marrow transplant is in our future, upon chatting for hours in end with our wonderful doctors (seriously they are fantastic and collaborative and I can't say enough good stuff about their expertise and care), it seems that trying ATG first has a reasonable chance of calming his liver and spleen thus making a future transplant less complicated. There is also a chance that it could fix his bone marrow too but only time will tell. Normally they give this medication three months to have an effect on bone marrow production, in Nathan's case he's giving it four weeks to at least show some initial signs of improvement before switching gears and prepping for the transplant. This four weeks also buys us a little time while we get some genetic testing back as a known genetic diagnosis may necessitate a different preparation method for the bone marrow transplant. So, we wait.

On the more personal side, checking back in here feels very suffocating to me. The flood of emotions and reality of the situation really hit me last night. Aplastic anemia (aka bone marrow failure) is always deadly if left untreated, period. And these treatments are intense, essentially severely suppressing his immune system like an archaic hard reboot of an overloaded computer. Anybody else remember that blue screen on your computer? Yep... force quit, shut down, try to power up again and cross your fingers. That's kinda where we are. It's not chemo but that may also be in our future, who knows, certainly that would be part of the preparation for a bone marrow transplant. But I'm rambling on. This is what it's like to be inside my brain right now. In the meantime, Nate is generally happy and I am not a mess today as I was late last night. Tea and chocolate are awaiting, and I'm running low on both. And planning to add a yoga mat to my nightly ritual here too.