What have I forgotten to do?

Is the constant message going round in my head..
I'm sure I've covered everything.. anything I've forgotten can be sorted easily, of that I'm sure.

It's been a hectic day, Starting at 7am with the trip to pick up the shipper from IRL. Once again thanks Marc for your assistance with filling and priming it.

From there I took it to Wgtn hospital and the onslaught of paperwork began.
I found out today that this is the first time someone in Wgtn has privately organised and shipped their own stem cells overseas. I'd just figured it was what you did in these circumstances.
The head of Haematology came up and wanted to have a word with me.
He asked that I sign a letter stating that the cells were now in my care and that I understood and accepted all risks in transportation. This was fair enough I thought.

One thing that really worried me was his concerns that the shipment not be X-rayed while in transit. This had never occurred to me, apparently it will render the cells useless. At that point we all drove home the importance to the agent from World Couriers that the container be marked accordingly and all paperwork stipulated the consequences of such. Scary, scary.. imagine the results of having my bone marrow destroyed by chemo and not understanding why the new ones won't grow.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to ask the head of Haematology if there were any other factors other than my weak marrow and low stem cell harvest that could affect the transplant. He said no and repeated what we already knew about slow recovery times etc.
I got the impression he was very positive about my decision, he certainly didn't have anything negative to say and expressed no concerns. It really does make me feel a heck of a lot better.

Loading the bags of stem cells was interesting, there were ten of them in total, looking like small bags of frozen orange cordial. I had purchased a nine blood bag rack for the shipper and we just managed to get all 10 squeezed in along with a couple of tiny test ampules. The bags were kept in a large cryo refrigerator (about the size of a large chest freezer but with pipes and guages) and their location is recorded on a computer system. It was a good thing I was there because half the bags were in the system under Scanlan and the rest under Scanlon. I pointed out the typo on the paper work and the other bags were located. I'm sure they would have found them regardless, but it always amazes me that people just randomly change the spelling of my name. In a hospital enviroment that can be down right dangerous.

All day today I kept bumping into people, my pocket is full of scraps of paper and business cards of friends and acquaintances that want to be kept up to speed and sent a link to this blog.
I've always believed that everything happens for a reason, both good and bad. Bad things that happen may well be the best outcome you could want, only you don't realise it. Like crashing your car and complaining about the dent, when in fact the outcome was supposed to be far worse.
I started to write a lot more... then I realised I'm supposed to be packing.
I'll save it for a quiet day in a week or so.

A huge "thank you!!" to everyone for the kind words, emails, phone calls, texts and offers of help. Sarah and I have been completely overwhelmed by it all, It's just awesome!