Weekend Update 12/03/05

So far, they have collected about five or six million stem cells. Whether I am supposed to or not, I'm going to take the amount collected per day as a relative measure of the health of my bone marrow. Some people collect seven million or more in one day. These people have a disease but it does not affect their bone marrow and they are relatively young (35 or so). Even thought one point something million stem cells collected per day is a respectable number, I can't help compare it with seven million per day.

We woke to another blanket of snow this morning. We walked to the clinic on snow covered sidewalks in 14 degree air with almost no wind this morning. The sidewalks a block away from the clinic are heated so they were free of snow and dry. It didn't start snowing again until about mid-morning and continued to show for the remainder of the day. The bed I was in for stem cell collection was angled partially toward the window. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean on the TV by my bed as it snowed.

After my additional five hours in bed, we ate lunch at Victoria's Italian Restaurant around one PM. We walked through the underground to get there. We were seated in a booth in the front of the restaurant near the window. It was snowing hard. The street and everything else was covered with snow. There were horse drawn carriages traveling down the street in front of the restaurant at what would be a safe speed for all. They were loaded with people who were well wrapped. I suppose the horse drawn carriages only get out when travel conditions make the street a level playing field for them to share with cars.

After lunch, we had to exit the underground from the Kahler Grand Hotel lobby because the door to the Mayo clinic part of the underground locked behind us when we exited earlier. As we walked across the snow covered street in front of the hotel, I couldn't help but notice the hoof prints of the horses mingled with tire tracks in the street as I looked down trying to avoid anything I might not care to step on in the street. I bought some real nice rubber snow boots in preparation for our stay in the North country which I was wearing. However, they are only waterproof. And they have a fairly complicated tread pattern which helps with traction in the snow but which was most likely not designed with barnyard applications in mind! Now that I think about it, cowboy boots do usually have a flat leather sole.

Stay tuned for future updates.