'Twas the night before panky...

Me taking a walk in my short sleeved tshirt

Well, here we are on the night before the cranky panky yanky. I am very ready for this to be over and done with. Of course, I have some mild nerves here, but I get much more spun up on Sunday nights when I know I have to go to work the next day!

I finished up my testing today. I'm in a study for a new medication that's supposed to help the islet cells produce more insulin. I had to do 2 days of testing. The first day, they hook me up to 2 IVs - 1 to draw blood from and the other to put stuff in. First they pushed in some glucose, and drew my blood about every minute. Then 20 minutes in, they gave me some insulin to see how well my body reacted to that. Then today I just had to drink a Boost shake and then they took my blood every half hour for 2 hours to test my blood sugars. This study is a double blind study, so I won't know if I'm getting the real drug or a placebo, but it's worth a try! Plus, they pay for my travel and lodging expenses for 2 days, including this trip! We used airline miles to get out here (bummer), but they'll reimburse my plane ticket home, plus the 2 nights we spent at the hotel. Not a bad deal since we were going to be here anyway!

I took some photos of our lovely apartment. It's really a dorm room, but not too bad at all. No granite countertops or travertine tile, but it'll do. It's nice to have gotten it, because it's a 2 br apartment w/ kitchen for less than half the cost of a single hotel room, so it's a pretty good deal!

Kitchen and "dining room"

Living room area

One of the bedrooms

I also took some photos of the hospital waiting room. It has 4 pods that have chairs, couches that fold out to be beds, and big screen TVs. They also have a little office area, and a nice big screen that updates each patient's status. Not that mine will change all that much...

One of the pods in the waiting room

The computers in the waiting room

Status screen

We have to be there at 5:30 am for a 7:00 (per admissions) or 7:30 (per the nurses) surgery time. The surgery usually takes 12-14 hours. Once they open me up, it takes about 4 hours to remove my pancreas. Then they will take it to the lab where they will harvest out the islets. This takes 4-6 hours. Then they will inject the islets into the portal vein of my liver.

Mom said she would update my blog, so check it for my status! Thank you everyone who has supported my family and me through all this. It has meant so much to us. And Cami and Kyle - if you're reading this - I love you SO much (Google infinity macaroni and cheese)!!! I will get better soon and then be back to see my babies! We will go on bike rides and walks and do all sorts of fun stuff. It might take a while, but I will get back to being my mean old mom self! Love, Mamacita :-)