The messages pictured in that post were on the wall of the Family relaxation room of the stem-cell transplant unit at the University of Maryland Medical Center. And honestly, those cards throughout the unit helped me quite a bit during my hospital stay for my autologous stem cell transplant last year.
My admission date was supposed to be October 2nd, 2019, but I got admitted a day early, and started high-dose chemotherapy that same evening.
How can you help me #LightTheNight? Long story short: I want to find ways to help patients and families dealing with blood cancers — if you haven’t checked out my #LightTheNight fundraising page for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the link is: https://pages.lls.org/ltn/md/baltimor20/elodieslightthenight.
We would love to have you on our team! Once you click on the link, there’s a button at the bottom called “join”. If it doesn’t take you directly to my team, you then look for the Baltimore event and then you can look by Team Captains. And you type in my last name: Nowodazkij. You can decide how much you want to raise and LLS gives you all the tools you need. Thank you to everyone who already donated!
Did you know that LLS helped advance 55 of the 65 blood cancer treatment options approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration since 2017?
Long story long: Last year on October 2nd, I was at the hospital. My admission date for my autologous stem-cell transplant was supposed to be October 2nd, 2019, but I got admitted a day early, on October 1st and started high-dose chemotherapy that same evening.
This was part of the message The Chemical Engineer had posted on our CaringBridge on October 1st, “Today we got a call from the hospital and the admission date was moved up by 24 hours, so it’s happening! We are trying to stay cool and prepare to check in at 12:30 pm.” That part about staying cool? The operative word of that sentence is “trying”.
Staying cool wasn’t that easy, especially as I still had things I wanted to do before getting admitted. I wanted to take a stroll into our favorite park by the water for example. I was scared. I had done a lot of work to prepare myself mentally and that switch in schedule, which I knew could happen, still came as a surprise. I thought I had another day to get ready. But, there was no time and off to the hospital we went. The team at the hospital was amazing and made me feel at ease. Looking back, I think the stress would have been even higher if my parents and Alex would not have been able to visit me as often as they did. On October 2nd, 2019 I also got more high-dose chemo, and I was also signing books for a vendor event in our neighborhood that was taking place that weekend, and where The Chemical Engineer went for me.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about joining #LightTheNight …
Thank you to everyone who already donated, and thank you to Sam and Alex for joining my team. I could have come up with a cool name for our team, but right now we’re “Elodie’s Light The Night.” And did you know you can join us and help us raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society? They give you the tools you need. You get your own fundraising page and you set your own goals.
Check out the link here: https://pages.lls.org/ltn/md/baltimor20/elodieslightthenight
Elodie Nowodazkij 