Hi! It's almost 2am Sunday night/ Monday morning, so I guess this counts for our Monday blog. We slept all day, so now I'm not sure whether or not I can fall back asleep...Ah, who amI kidding? I can always fall asleep; it's the staying asleep that I'm not good at.

Mike has continued to sleep pretty much all day, as he has for the past two days. As a result, he is getting weaker and weaker. The doctor is totally unfazed, she says his fatigue is due to an extremely high level of a particular drug in his body, and that he'll feel better (she doesn't however, even hint at when). Apparently, because his kidneys don't work as well as they should, they don't filter out as much of "foreigh substances" like medications as would have been expected. This particular med, which has a million side effects, is one of the very most important...it deals with graft vs. host disease (which is the complicated reaction when donor material -- stem cells, kidneys, heart,skin, etc) is introduced to a recipients' body. Mike will have to take it for about a year all together. I think when the dose is corrected, the side effects are much more subtle. Right now, they're pretty lousy! Not only is he tired, but he is very unsteady on his feet, and his hands shake so badly it's hard for him to get food on a fork or into his mouth (which is of little interest to him anyway.)I wake him up every once in a while to try to eat something, or to do some exercises with the stretchy bands the physical therapists gave him.

The last few days have been a strange adventure, with the nurses camping out wherever they could find room to unroll a sleeping bag, and with any approved visitors" (like me") needing to wear an arm band for identification. Many of the staff either lived nearby or had family that lived in or near a storm battered neighborhood and so they were obbviously concerned and kept running to nearby tv sets to see the news whenever they could. All of these circumstances have diluted the worry we might otherwise have experienced about Mike. We are both convinced we are in the right place, with the best people watching over him, so we're gonna trust the doc that he'll perk up soon. And, trust me, the "he-owes-me" jewelery list is growing while you read...