Fever All Through the Night

I swear I haven't played that song lately (we listen to great melodies throughout the day- today was a Ray LaMontagne day), but dad is taking the lyrics to heart. He doesn't have an infection (knock on wood), but the fever has been persistently above 100, and typically around 101.0-101.7. Dad slept most of the day, and is actually feeling ok, as long as the lights are low and he's in between dreams.

We've started to pencil in plans to be in Houston starting labor day, and depending on when Sissy's stem cells go into dad, we'll probably be there until Christmas at the earliest. Sissy and Steven have made plans to head west on the 29th, she will begin a roughly 10 day process of receiving neupogen shots, and then sitting in collection chair for around 4-6 hours a day, when blood will leave one arm, get radiated to get her extra marrow/stem cells out of the bloodstream, and her blood will go right back into the other arm. Steven is thinking of magic tricks and juggling acts to entertain her for that long!

It's definitely a sacrifice we're all grateful that she's so ever-willing to make. Sissy is able to give dad a 63rd birthday gift that no one else could ever come close to matching: the potential for another 30 years of a healthy life!

Speaking of marrow donation, did you know it's really easy? All you do is send in a few Q-tips of saliva and you enter the database. If you become a match, all you do is receive neupogen shots, your marrow cells get kicked out into your blood stream, and they collect them from the blood. Only a few pricks and shots... To save a life! We just received a wonderful card from our friend Meg Merritt and she told us she had just done it, and it made me realize a lot of people reading this would be willing to help out someone in need. The registry really needs more minority donors- they are under-represented and the chances of an Asian, Hispanic or African finding a match is quite low (I suppose we should really say "majorities"). So spread the word! I'll put up another post with information on how to receive a kit if you all are interested.

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." St. Thomas Aquinas