Day 16 Friday

The excitement mounted today as we waited for our visit with the doctor to hopefully finally get discharged "formally" from Dr. Bierman at the Med. Center and to get our "going home" papers. We loaded the car with our worldly possessions from Laura and John's house, with the help of John. Dad, as master car packer, did his thing. Our appointment was for mid-afternoon and when the doctor finally came in, he gave the nod to head home! He again said that Dad had done as well as anyone has ever done with this transplant and said he looked great. So Dad was discharged from his care and will now be under the care of his oncologist here in Lincoln. The first order of events is to get some blood work done to see when those platelets tell the story that it's ok to have the "tassles" (hickman catheter) removed. The magic number to reach on the platelets is 50. Dad's platelets hung on 18 for 3 days and then finally yesterday they jumped to 28. So he just has 22 more to go and then we head back up to Omaha to have the catheter removed. So I'll call Monday for an appointment with Dr. Hutchins here and hopefully by Wed, we'll be heading to Omaha to get that thing out. Dr. Bierman said that since the catheter was coming out, I didn't need to bother flushing the lines over the weekend. That was just fine with me. I was prepared...I had been practicing on him several times over the last week, but I was glad to hear I'm off duty.

Dr. Bierman said no restrictions to Dad...just to rest when he's tired...and that it will take awhile to get full strength back. He said that he wants Dad to go to an oncology radiologist as will be recommended by Dr. Hutchins (Dad's oncologist here). In around 3 weeks, Dad will get another PET/CT scan to see how things are...and most likely, with the consultation of Dr. Bierman, he recommends following this whole thing up with some targeted radiation. He described it as after you have a cake nicely made, you top it off with icing...to make it even better. The radiation would be to make sure there is no trace of anything unwanted. He wants Dad to recover from the transplant for around 3 -4 weeks first, though. So we'll see what plans Dr. Hutchins has for regular blood work, etc. the first part of this next week.....but for now....we're FREE TO GO HOME!!!

It was very exhilarating to head down that road to Lincoln. It's been over a month since we've been home...and as absolutely great as it's been to be staying at Laura and John's (it has been wonderful...feeling so much at home there. And we've had so many great conversations with them...always enjoyable. In fact, Dad and John, I believe, HAVE to have solved all the problems of the world (maybe, the universe!!) with their many conversations (including Nebraska football!!). They have had a great time visiting from the early morning hours to late evening. It has been indescribably wonderful staying with them...we just love them so much!) In spite of all that, it was still wonderful seeing that road ahead of us to Lincoln...and also seeing the road to Omaha behind us. Lenny, this picture is for you:

And yet another photo as we were on I-80:

It was great to pull into the driveway and great to see Sara! Inside she had a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting for me and a balloon bouquet for Dad. I'll post a photo of that tomorrow!

I was falling asleep in mid-conversation at about 8:30 so I was ready for bed by 9:00 and Dad was still content to stay up! But we all ended up going to bed around 9:00 or 9:30. Ah, sweet repose!