Oh, Right, This DOES Kind of Suck

I guess I'll unpack. For a few days, anyway. As soon as I published my logistics post, put all my tshirts in little baggies and sorted out a week's worth of children's clothes, the phone rang. My nurse at Dana Farber was calling to tell me that my donor was in a sporting accident this weekend and is unable to donate on schedule. (A sporting accident? What did he do? A sporting injury is not the type of thing that should result in extra chemotherapy). 

My doctor is still waiting to find out the nature of the injury and the length of the delay (apparently the donor doesn't come to Boston, but he does have to travel to a donation facility), and whether we need to call the next person in line. I guess that's already been done, actually, so whoever gets there first will be my donor. Unfortunately, processing a donor takes several weeks, so we're set back a minimum of three. Although I won't know for a couple of days, odds are my doctor is going to ask me to go through another round of consolidation chemo, which is less arduous than the conditioning process but still not fun. In that case, it will be closer to six weeks before I go to Boston.

When I write a blog post, I am always honest about how I feel. I wait to write until I have completed a thought, and generally, when I've done that, I have something positive to share. My first reaction to this news was to take it in stride; I've understood all along that one can't keep a calendar during this process, and this certainly does not rank with real bad news in the world of oncology.

But I was ready to go, and now I'm thrown. I don't want to do extra chemo. I don't want to be in a holding pattern again. People tell me how brave I am, how strong, and ask me if there's anything I need and sometimes I feel guilty, as if everyone else is making more of it than it is. As if it isn't that hard.

So thanks, Universe, for reminding me to accept compliments and assistance with grace, for affirming the conflicts inherent in trying to force order on the disorderly, for keeping me nimble and testing my endurance. Because this is that hard. It turns out this whole thing really kind of sucks sometimes. I can roll with that. And now I can go get some grapefruit juice.