Exhausted

I just recently finished a book called, "The Happiness Hypothesis," written by a psychology professor at the University of Virginia named, Johnathan Haidt. One of its basic premises, is that people are generally a certain level of "happy," and there are only a few things that can increase your personal level of happiness - each which take a lot of effort to be effective. Of course, regardless of your happy-level, there are always periods of highs and lows. Obviously, we're in one of those low lulls that isn't going to get better for quite a while. Luckily, I am certain (as Haidt also points out in his book) that we will once again return to the happy people we once were. And, I have to admit, that compared to the general population, Jeff and I are both very happy people.

I have to remind myself of this after days like today. We were at the hospital for about 8 hours, and when we got home we were exhausted. It's particularly difficult to be upbeat all the time, but it's most impossible when you're tired. It's nights like this when I have trouble imagining how on earth I'm going to have a baby in the middle of this mess. But, like Jeff just told me, I don't have a choice, the baby is going to come regardless of what is happening here.

Other than being exhausted, Jeff is feeling okay today. We are done with Round 2 of chemo, and we'll have a day off from the hospital tomorrow. Mark, Chad and Jill have all had blood drawn that will be sent away for HLA-typing. Hopefully, one of them will be a good match and we'll be able to start the process of getting ready for the transplant. If none of them match, the transplant coordinator will start the search for an unrelated donor. Before all of you volunteer to get tested, please understand that it is highly unlikely that anyone Jeff knows (other than his siblings) would be a match. In fact, you generally need a pool of about 3 million people to find a match for any one person. Luckily, the registry is quite large, and because Jeff does not have a strangely-mixed ethnic heritage, he has a good chance of finding a match.