On shaky ground

Photo by Scott Johnston, taken on the rooftop the morning of September 7th.

Last night there was a 7.0 earthquake just outside of Acapulco. We are staying 5 hours northeast in Puebla, Mexico on the 4th floor of a building built in the 1970's. My sister who has more experience with earthquakes than I, jumped up right away when she felt the smaller preshocks and started yelling it's an earthquake! But I didn't believe her. She ran to the door and was like, we gotta go! But I still didn't believe her, I couldn't feel anything until it really got underway. By the time we were heading down the stairs the entire building was cracking and swaying and it was hard to stay balanced, especially for me, since I can barely keep my balance without an earthquake.

Renee was begging me to hurry up because we didn't know if the shaking would continue, and start to break apart the building. I told her to run ahead since I was slow. She ran out of the building and told everyone I was still walking down the stairs. Rob who is a Marine, ran back into the building to carry me down the steps, but by that time, the shaking had stopped so we just walked the rest of the way down. 

Luckily the building we are staying in is rated to withstand a 8.0 magnitude earthquake. This one was 7.0 but it was far enough away that there was no apparent damage to the outside city. Inside the building there are lots of large cracks in the halls and paint chips were all over the floors on every level. 

Regarding my treatment, things are coming along fine. Since September 3rd I have been getting injections of Filgrastim twice a day. Once at 8am and once at 7pm. Filgrastim mobilizes stem cells in the bone marrow causing them to migrate into the blood stream. On Saturday, September 11th my blood will be taken, the stem cells removed, and the plasma and red cells will be put back. The stem cells will be stored at 2 C. Then I will have two more rounds of chemo, on Saturday and Sunday. My stem cells will be returned to me on Monday. 



The first couple of days on Filgrastim were not too bad, but by day 3 I could feel tingling in my bones and weakness. The other patients here are getting headaches from the shots. My bones are aching and I was pretty constipated until I got some medicine to take care of that.



We are lucky to be here with an amazing group of people. Here is a photo of us taken today on the rooftop.



Comments

  1. JacquieSeptember 9, 2021 at 11:33 AM

    Omg... so glad you're ok... is that a volcano? Keep strong... you can do this!!! Scott and Jacquie... love you❤👍🤩😍

    ReplyDelete

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