Day 180

Today is Friday, July 13th. In three days at 9:32am EDT 43 years ago, Apollo 11 blasted off from Florida. It's pretty exciting.

Seriously, people in the '60s decided to send three men in a small box to the moon where they would walk around, get back into the box, and come back home. If that's not the coolest thing we've done since creating an exponentially growing extremely destructive culture bent on destroying the environment that helped said culture thrive in the first place, I don't know what is.

But also, the significance of it being Friday the 13th in July, is that my official Day Zero was 6 months ago, on Friday the 13 in January. If we were to go back 6 months from now, last weekend I received two days of chemotherapy. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I received radiation to my entire body twice each day, and yesterday I received one. I got one bag of new cells (donor cells), but it wasn't enough. So today, I will get another bag of donor cells marking the transplant day, and tomorrow will be Day 1 of recovery.

I'm pretty excited to be here right now, and I was recently talking to Kym and Goldberry (separately) about changes I've gone through since October. I'd say the first change is that I no longer prefer wheat bread. I like white bread. Yeah, what of it?

The second thing is this: I hear a lot of people talking about how going through serious events like this can make a person "appreciate life" more than they used to. It seems to be written and repeated more by those who haven't gone though things more so than by those who have. How do I feel about life now?

I think the main thing is, I'm a lot less tolerant of bullshit.

Hoping to see Nittany's and Gator's older brother this weekend. He'll be in Plymouth for a wedding and I've been cleared by Dr. Grant to go see him for a few hours. I look forward to it!

Also, next Wednesday I have a checkup so I'll be sure to report back on that as well.