Program Note

*This is not an official post, lest anyone think I am delving into online diary territory...*

So. What's up with me? First, thanks for all of your emails and calls and otherwise-delivered lovely thoughts. Every single one means a lot.

Well, the excrement is hitting the air cooling turbine, to be brief. (?) I'm going to need a bone marrow transplant, sooner rather than later. I don't have a matched family donor, but I am on the registry and have a ton of potential matches. We're doing all of the rapid response activities that usually follow such a chat with one's doctor: finding a place, working out whether I have time to wait for *the* donor to be identified, contacted and marrow-extracted. Deciding whether to do a pseudo-experimental transplant that might reduce the incidence of post-transplant complications, which are generally the reason for transplant mortality rather than the transplant itself. Figuring out what insurance covers. Figuring out how to ensure that daily life will go on as normally as possible for Bambina during the transplant. Asking myself if I really, truly have the stones to do this. Realizing that I'd better score some regardless because I don't have a choice in the matter.

So. It's on. Still not sure how or when or where, but it's on. I always knew that, as Hottie Hebrew Hematologist put it so reassuringly, "this disease is going to bite you one way or another, sooner or later." I always knew it, but somehow really figured there'd be an exception made in my case by virtue of my natural good looks, innate intelligence, breathtaking capacity for kindness to others, and exceedingly generous quantity of modesty and self-effacement...

And so. It's on. I'll keep you posted, and in the meantime will try to not litter your blog reading with Adventures in Hematological Emergencies: From CBCs to PRBCs, The Excruciatingly Tedious Story of Haggis's Bone Marrow. Just know that I appreciate the love and concern, that I'm hunkering down for some serious shit coming my way, and that I definitively plan to be around for the SS Haggis 5,000th post in 2010.

In the meantime, text your vote for Sanjaya to the number on your screen. :)