And so it begins

I was talking with Dogger last night and it's done. Christian did his thing and they got over 5 million stem cells from him in one collection, so he's all done! They can just relax and do their thing until their flight home on Friday afternoon.

Since we got off to such a rocky start (again, "Bad Rehearsal, Great Play" is my mantra), I've steered clear and given them a wide path. (In other words, don't bug and everything will be fine.) So I called them last night just to make sure that they were doing okay and that he knew, again, how much we appreciated this and what it meant to us. (And also that maybe one day he and Dogger can talk.)

While talking with Dogger the nurse was taking his vitals regularly. Heart, blood pressure, temperature...all normal. She said that generally any signs of problems will reveal themselves in the first 15 minutes. We were past the 20 minute mark and he was doing fine. She gave him some benadryl later for minor itching. (He has a tendancy to get "itchy" when he gets blood products, so they weren't worried.) And he got a good nights sleep. It only took about an hour for the transplant, so now its in God's hands and Dogger's body to do the rest.

After I got off the phone, I got a beautiful migraine which I'm still dealing with today. It's just the release of all the stress building up to this point. So I'm going to take my medicine and just relax. This afternoon I'll go up to see Dogger and spend some time with him.

So far, so good. Thank you God for hearing our prayers. I know that you will see us through this.