best laid plans, part III

Friday
     I stumble out of bed to check my email.  Student affairs has replied and asks if I can come in to talk.  Nearly all students live right near the school so I think that Student Affairs doesn't remember that I live a good 35 miles away.  I rush through rush hour traffic and get to school realizing that though I had intended to reschedule this exam, now that I've fought traffic in a sleep deprived state and come all this way, I'm taking the damned test.  I talk it over with the powers that be and she helps me to decide.  If I take the exam, most likely I'll do just fine.  But what about that small chance I bomb it and fail which is not outside the realm of possibility in my current mental state?  Worst case scenario is that I retake an exam sometime in May or June.  If I reschedule it, they write a whole new exam just for me.  I don't like the sound of that one bit.  If the course director writes a really hard exam and even 10% of the class fails, the course director is going to have Student Affairs all over them.  However, if they write a really hard exam and the idiot who had to postpone the test fails, well then clearly it's the fault of that lazy special student who had to postpone the exam and make the prof go through the trouble of writing an extra exam.  I decide to take it and roll the dice.
     About 15 minutes before the exam starts my mom calls me.  Preliminary first glance at the biopsy says it's not cancerous.  They got in touch with the PA and learn that fresh stem cells were going to be used on my dad.  That changes things.  Fresh work better than frozen but I presumed that since the donor was unrelated, they'd be using frozen.  I guess with the miracle of Fed-Ex and UPS they can ship them overnight on ice.  That, or the person is actually local.  Regardless, there is a reason to keep on schedule.  They also agree to run the thyroid function tests. 
     I finish my exam and trudge on over to MDACC.  We're going forward with the chemo and cross our fingers that the thyroid is nothing serious or at least manageable if it does turn out to be anything of consequence.  And just to make things fun, I stay for about the first hour of chemo.  I tell my mom that if a reaction is going to occur, odds are it's during the first part.  No biggie.  I leave.  And of course my dad has a reaction.  It was mild this time but they had to halt the infusion, give more steroids, give more benadryl and wait.  And then they start again slowly, slowly.
    So that's about how well plans work.  It's not a script so much as an overarching guideline.  There will be LOTS of bumps and diversions along the way.  It's impossible to forsee all the possibilities so much of what will be done will be reactionary in nature and decisions will be made on the fly.  That's just the way it goes so we might as well get used to it.