#23 Sandbox
Alas, I emerge from the worst of the transplant times back to some semblance of myself. I will need to process many things like the role of suffering and the purpose of pain, but for today, I’d like to focus on getting along well in the sandbox. I think about all the cells: my cells, my beloved donor’s cells, the cells of the generous people who give blood or platelets. I ask them, encourage them, cajole them, to get along well in the sandbox of my body.
I am in a medical moment of extremely controlled orchestration of biology, and beyond the impressive pharmaceutical pill pile I ingest each day, I can only add my prayers, my detailed hematological visualizations, and my dedication to nourishing myself to positively influence my outcome.
In many moments of my life, that last sentence written would be par for the course. But much of the challenge when your blood counts are so low is that you have no psychic, emotional, or physical energy, which makes it challenging to keep to the good habits. Today we see evidence that the stem cells have engrafted and have begun their powerhouse work ethic, producing enough baby white blood cells to fill my marrow and start to spill out like live rivulets into my bloodstream — hallelujah! With this comes renewed focus on the positive, just in the nick of time.
