NIH Appointment

I left early yesterday morning for my appointment at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It was a fairly uneventful trip, although as usual traffic was an issue. I left at 8:15am and made it to Bethesda just in time for my 11am appointment. I was registered as an outpatient and they did an EKG, chest X-rays, and I spoke with two doctors. They want to make sure that I am healthy enough to be put under anesthesia. The first doctor took a medical history and talked a little about the bone marrow harvest. The other doctor is one of the world's experts on hereditary hemochromatosis and was very interested in my family. She is also the head doctor in the National Marrow Donor Program and wanted to meet me and make sure I didn't have any questions. The final thing I did was donate a unit of blood that will be given to me post surgery and they also took about 5 tubes of blood to test for various illnesses.

It was quite a busy day and I was wiped out at the end of it. I stopped in Fairfax to have dinner with my in-laws before I headed home. I needed a few minutes of not dealing with traffic on 495. Seriously how to people live in the Northern Virginia area? I would be in trouble for road rage! The kids were still awake when I got back to Harrisonburg at almost 9pm. It was so good to get to spend some time with them before they went to bed.

I am still excited about the prospect of donating marrow. I will find out early to mid next week if the harvest will go ahead on the 30th. They have to make sure I'm healthy and that the recipient is ready.

Yesterday was the four year anniversary of my dad's passing and I was missing him so bad last night. I think he would be so proud of my donation and would have been so excited to see my kids growing up. I hate that he's not around to see them. I don't pretend to understand God's will or why things happen. I just try to put my faith in Him and hope that maybe someday it will all be clear. In the meantime, I am trying to show His love for others and am trying to just learn as much as I can about God and about what He wants for my life.

It is 10am and the kids are still in their jammies. I have got to go get them dressed and brush their teeth.