Saturday October 5th, 2013

Happy Birthday to Jenn, Happy Birthday to Jenn!!

Jenn received her T-cells to from her lovely donor (Whomever you are...we will find out who you are a year from today and we appreciate all that you did for my wife!!) and all is well.  The transplant takes less than 20 minutes, but that little bag of cells are the most important transfusion Jenn will ever receive in her life!!

This past week has been rough on Jenn emotionally, so her coordinator here at Roswell setup a visitation from Larry, a former bone marrow transplant patient here at Roswell.  Larry was quite inspirational as he too has been through two bone marrow transplants and had just about every complication you can think of.  He wasn't supposed to make it out of transplant, but told us that he just focused on what mattered most to him; his wife and family.  He told Jenn that she needs to stay here for me and for her family and I couldn't agree more.  She has so much to live for and that was immediately clear!

Jenn is doing much better with her speech and walking as well.  This past week she even walked 20 laps one day and most other days she would pound out 12-15 laps.  If you consider that less then 2 weeks ago, Jenn was barely able to walk 1 lap, her progress is quite remarkable!  Now with that said, Jenn is still emotionally quite low, so if anyone would like to send a card for encouragement it would be greatly appreciated.  Please send cards to the following address below.

Jenn Pyjas
372 Lake Ave
Lancaster, NY 14086

I want to let everyone know that even though all is well so far, the serious battle has yet to begin.  The next two to three weeks will be rougher as the chemo sets in and the donors marrow starts to graft.  We just need to send prayers that the marrow grafts and that there is not to much graft versus host disease (GVHD).

Lastly, I want to thank Kim Lomas (Jenn's Mom) for visiting last week, without her here Jenn wouldn't be in the great physical and mental condition that she was when she came into the BMT transplant wing this past week.  There certainly is special bond between a mother and her daughter and I got to see that first hand and it was heart warming!  Also, I want to thank everyone that I work with at Epson for covering for me this past week at the Synnex National Conference and for the beautiful bouquet of flowers that Jenn received here yesterday.  They are absolutely gorgeous and I cannot thank everyone enough!

Much love from room 5617!!