Day 1: so never mind our plan making, we’ll start living!

Transplant: done did. 

Well, it wasn’t exactly triumph as I pictured it. That is, triumph: verb. 1) to wear a party hat like a newborn 2) listen to hardcore as stem cells surge toward your body 3) to be a badass. Instead of that, in true cancer pants fashion: out of the blue marched an immensely fun series of anxiety attacks. It began pretty promptly after they told me around 3pm that the transplant wouldn’t be until 9pm—I had been planning on around 5 or 6. So this was a long time to wait. I thought I had been doing fine, I felt ok. Earlier I had watched You’ve Got Mail (ie. the most perfect film, why can’t I LIVE IN THIS FILM--the stark difference of situation in which I find myself perhaps got to me.) To be told that I had to wait even longer for this pretty scary thing to happen to me, while also anticipating how anticlimactic the actual event would be—started brewing something, apparently. So to slow my pacing and calm my labored breathing and crying spurts, they gave me a full dose of Ativan. Then I slept for a few hours, and remained drowsy with more Benadryl through the entirety of the thing. Talk about things being other than what you expect… however, I did manage to listen to Torches Together by mewithoutYou.

Thank you to all who wished me well and a happy new birthday etc. etc. etc! I’m sorry if I didn’t respond to your phone call or text message or whatnot, I spent a lot of yesterday in a drug-induced haze… I love you still. Thank you for understanding.

I'm feeling a lot better today, besides a few episodes of intense nausea. But all in all, I don't feel that different, which, I don't know what I was expecting. Now we start counting, waiting.

Here's a reenactment photo to quench your at-least-I-look-better-than-that thirst:

you can see my family put up party decorations, winner.

Why burn poor and lonely

under a bowl or under a lampshade,

or on the shelf beside the bed where at night

you lay turning like a door on its hinges?

First on your left side, then on your right side,

then on your left side again?

Why burn poor and lonely?

Tell all the stones we’re gonna make a building.

We’ll be cut into shape and set into place—

or if you’d rather be a window, I’ll gladly be the frame:

reflecting any kind words, we’ll let in all their blame…

and ruin our reputation all the same.

So never mind our plan making, we’ll start living:

anyway, aren’t you unbearably sad?

Then why burn so poor and lonely?

We’ll be like torches! We’ll be like torches!

We’ll be like torches! We’ll be torches together—

Torches together!

We’ll be like torches! We’ll be like torches!

With whatever respect our tattered dignity demands,

torches together, hand in hand.