Cycle 1, Day +27: Cooling Our Heels...

... while we wait for a bed to become available.

The bone marrow transplant nurse called me this morning to tell me that Steven wouldn't be admitted this evening to begin his next cycle of chemo. There are still no beds. St. Jude admits patients for bone marrow transplants on Sundays and Thursdays only. Since we're not being admitted today (Thursday), this means the next available time will be Sunday.

A bed may or may not be available on Sunday night. They can't tell us in advance whether or not he will be admitted until late Sunday morning. Previously we were told that he was #2 in line for a bed, now we don't know where he is on the list.

This is frustrating to us, to say the least. Not that we're looking forward to the chemo, far from it, but Steven voiced his concern that waiting might make the treatments less effective. That and the fact that any delay slows down the entire process, and we want to go home as soon as we can.

We can't leave for the weekend because of his pre-admission hospital appointments.

So, we'll wait and hope that he gets admitted on Sunday.

We went to the zoo last Sunday. The Memphis zoo is much smaller than the San Diego zoo, but is very nice. They've got two pandas that we got to see with no waiting. The pandas were awake and eating.

Probably the thing the kids enjoyed the most was watching some pheasants in an enclosure. There was one male and four females, and the male was quite clearly interested in a particular female who would have nothing to do with him. The male would pursue her all around the enclosure, and she would try to make herself invisible in the bushes, or to go somewhere that he couldn't possibly follow. Meanwhile the other females seemed to be trying to get the male interested in them, but he was only interested in the one.

They had a great reptile exhibit, with a 21-foot reticulated python, a cobra, a gaboon viper, and several Komodo dragons (none of them as big as the one at the San Diego zoo).

We'll find something interesting to do this weekend to keep busy.

- Kathleen