Yesterday we had our "Data Review Conference" at the SCCA to go over all of the test results from the past couple of weeks and sign our final consent forms before checking back into the hospital. We dropped Georgia off at Grammy & Grandpa's house so we could focus on the meeting and get any of your last questions answered.
The conference was good in the sense that all of Georgia's test results look good... chest xray, echo cardiogram, dental exam, blood work, all of it. Her lab results show that some of the JMML markers look slightly better, some slightly worse but all enough for everyone to feel confident that this is what we need to do. We were given sheets on the three different types of chemotherapy that she will get during her "conditioning" as they call it. We went over the likely and less likely but possible side effects, then we were done. We walked to the elevator a bit dazed.. that's it, next stop transplant, I can't believe the time has come.
Even though we both wanted to race as fast as we could back to my parents house to hold Georgia we took the opportunity to grab a drink somewhere first. We spotted a little French bistro and thought that would do the trick.. parking was a zoo but we finally found a spot on a side street. We walked hand in hand out to the main road and there across the street was Cafe Flora, a restaurant that always reminds me of my mom, that was where we needed to go. Over 15 years ago my mom had half her liver removed at Swedish hospital, follow up tests showed a short time later a large growth on her liver and the doctors told her there was a 95% chance it was cancer regrowth. She went in for her appointment to confirm but was told that it was actually her liver regenerating, they had never seen a liver regenerate that fast. To celebrate a group gathered at Cafe Flora.
We walked in the restaurant and let the hostess know that we only had time for a quick drink, she showed us to a table in the atrium, the same place we'd celebrated so many years ago. I told Brian about the celebration we'd had with my mom and so many of her friends, I told him how we'd all hung spoons from our noses and how joyful it was. We raised our glasses and Brian said, "to Georgia" our eyes welled up with tears and we took a drink. We talked about how we can do this, it's going to be hard but we can do it, we don't need to set any records we will take as much time as Georgia needs to do this and be done with it. Before we left for good luck we both took our spoons and hung them from our noses... we can do this.