I made it!

I flew into Monterrey yesterday around 4pm and after meeting up with another patient and his wife at the airport, we were brought to our apartment. It was a rough start to the evening when we arrived and found out that the entire city along with two other cities in Mexico were experiencing a blackout. It left an unsettling feeling as we were quite literally unable to settle into our apartments! I met my carer, Gaby, who is a 26 year old nurse from Puebla, Mexico. She is such a sweet girl and I’m so blessed to be able to spend this month with a native speaker and a nurse. She knows what she is doing and I am definitely in good hands here. Thankfully power was restored overnight and we are on track to carry on with this treatment!

Today is considered day -13. The days count down to day 0 which will be my stem cell birthday when I get my stem cells back after having my immune system wiped out from the chemo treatments after day 0 it starts counting up into the positives. Today was one heck of a busy day. Non stop testing including blood work, an electrocardiogram, a spirometry test that I had to repeat (as did most of the patients), an MRI that I decided not to get in the US because my insurance wouldn’t cover it. We also got to have a welcome meeting where we were able to meet the rest of our group as well as the team of doctors and nurses and staff who will be guiding us along this journey. We have an awesome team of patients and caregivers and I can tell we will be lifelong friends-thanks to social media! There are three of us from the US and two patients from the UK. We all vary on the disability spectrum with me and one gentleman from the US who have little to no disability and the three other patients all needing some sort of mobility devise. After all of the testing we each met with the hematologist, neurologist, and internal medicine specialist and we were all given the green light to move on with this treatment.

My apartment is on the 13th floor but they call it the penthouse floor to ward off bad luck. I’ll take it! I have an amazing view of the mountains from my bedroom and it is very modern feeling and clean. I will have a lady coming in on weekdays to clean the apartment and once I get into neutropenia where my immune system is pretty much bottomed out, she will be here every day to completely clean the apartment and change the sheets. This neutropenic phase lasts usually 7-10 days. Over a week of daily clean sheets! Theres always something to look forward to!

I am going to call it a night. Tomorrow will be day -12 and the first day of chemo. I will be receiving my first dose of intravenous cyclophosphamide. I’ll get this for two days before beginning the twice daily shots of Filgrastim to start mobilizing my stem cell production.

My plan is to update daily, so until tomorrow, my friends! Adios!