da hala’i hope da ‘ino 
2 days of reflection has allowed me to clearly see how dark this experience has become for the two of us.
things are looking up though. after going to the office’s employee relations team, i was able to win the battle over my paid leave. after several hours of e-mailing and phoning, my supervisor admitted that he had lost the paperwork that i had submitted for the family medical leave act and that his supervisor had used it as a loophole to bring up the old rule.
all is clear now, i can exhaust my leave, apply to have some donated if i need it, and it was a learning experience for my supervisors. still no apology for treating me differently than my pregnant coworker, but i’ll take the victory that i got, thanks. i guess the miracle of birth is a lot easier for people to understand than a bone marrow transplant.
i was very tempted to say over the phone, “i was rii-iight, you were wroo-oong, ninny-ninny-boo-boo” but of course restrained myself as i am a grown-up, or am at least pretending to be one.
hubby’s got the beginning signs of graft vs host disease. this is good and bad news all rolled up into one. too much of it can make the graft fail, or even kill him. however, a little bit of it means that the new marrow is in his bones, growing, and trying to set up a new immune system. it has us both teetering on edge between joy that we have an outwardly visible sign that the transplant is working, and fear that the gvhd could get out of hand and become a life-threatening complication in the matter of an hour or two. for now i’ll take the “woo-hoo-the-new-marrow-is-working” viewpoint.
p.s. post title is “the calm after the storm” in hawaiian. thanks to hope and lisa for showing support.
