Day 1 of the lead up to the transplant

Susan & I drove over to Winston-Salem last night, leaving Sam home alone for the first time.  Haven't heard from the Asheville emergency services so we assume he emptied the fridge, played computer games until sunrise and is now sleeping it off.  In case you've forgotten (or haven't followed every enthralling episode), my transplant doesn't involve two operating tables and a dead body - they take my blood, filter out the stem cells and then, after they've been nasty to me for a few days, give me my stem cells back again.  Apparently they wipe out my immune system completely to the point where I am once again vulnerable to all those things I had as a kid like measles, mumps and chicken pox.
Today has been an endless series of tests, starting with a nice chat with the psychologist to make sure I wasn't completely nutty as a fruit cake and then moving on to having 24 test tubes of blood taken from my right arm (shades of Tony Hancock).  Then a chest x-ray, a measurement of my lung capacity, an EKG (finally I got to lie down but before I could go to sleep I was done).  Two to go - an ultrasound of my heart and a PET scan to complete the picture.  Then Susan can drive me home again and we can go back to normal in the lead up to Thanksgiving - we have no T-Day company this year due to Walmart's insistence on extracting every last dime from the American public and the American public feeling that getting a $10 toaster is more important than spending time with their family.
I've got way ahead of schedule today because, although all the appointments were scheduled for an hour, some took only 20 minutes and the folks concerned were good enough to squeeze me in for which I am hugely grateful.  So, although my last appointment is at 2:30, with a bit of luck we'll be on the road back to Asheville by then and we'll get home before dark.

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