Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving break, my brother and I flew home! It was a long day of travel as we left at 5am and arrived home at 8pm. Luckily, we beat the snow storm by just a couple of hours. When we left Idaho, it was snowing and in the 30s. When we landed in TN, it was in the high 60s and beautiful. I was heaven!! The entire week was spent without a jacket and I just didn't know what to do with myself!

The week went by fast as I was at St. Jude from Sunday to Tuesday, had thanksgiving, set up Christmas, visited friends, and left Saturday. When we arrived back in Idaho, my brother and I looked at each other and said, "What are we doing here? Are we crazy?" We were back in 13 degrees, 4-5 inches of snow, and more pilled up on the side of the road from a week of snow storms. The snow is beautiful, but after 2 weeks, I’m done with it! I wish I could have a better attitude, but when I went to get gas and my tank door was frozen shut, I was done. Really, where am at that this would happen? This is all a little foreign to me learning to ruff it in the snow. Oh this is going to be a long winter!! Let’s just say and I am no afraid to admit that A- I am not made for this place B- I’m a southern girl and proud of that!

My appt to St. Jude over the break went well overall. My doctor was impressed with how I looked and how things are going. I am now completely off of one of my immune suppressants! I've been on 2 different ones and a steroid for a year now. For several months now, they’ve been trying to wean me off the 1 immune suppres. So, it was nice to feel to finally be off one. From here on out, they will slowly continue to wean me off the steroid and then the 2nd immune suppressant. It will be so nice when I'm off them both because my immune system is terrible. It is a miracle I haven’t gotten sick all semester with the level my t and b cells were at! With going off the one of the immune supp they hope that my t/b cells will go up some.

So from here on out, I just hope that my body doesn't have any rejection issues as I wean off these medications. I've felt a sense of protection being on these meds even though I don't really enjoy them. If rejection starts up again, I basically start all over with going back on all the meds again for several months and starting the weaning process again. All this would be a disappointment as I mostly don't enjoy the side effects of these meds. Dry skin and cold weather can set rejection off, so my fear is that Idaho weather will set it off again. This has caused me to be a little hesitant to agree to wean off them, but I know the meds aren’t good for my body, so the sooner off the better. For now all’s I can do is put on lotion, stay warm, try not to fall on ice, and think happy thoughts as a walk to class.