By

Ibby Update

From: Ibby Caputo
Date: Dec. 15, 2007 9:43 p.m.
Subject: Ibby update

Dear family and friends,

It has been a while since I've written you. The last several weeks have been extremely intense on my body and mind, and I think I've lost touch with more than you, but with myself also.

I will give you a brief recap: I was in Cape Cod for Thanksgiving. It was wonderful. My family and some friends were there, and the day was beautiful—in the 60s. We walked on the beach and enjoyed each other's company. We ate, played games. I could feel myself getting tired though—it's almost as if I hid from myself the fact that I was sick for the first three months and worked on making all the preparations—where I would live, who would take care of me, how I would afford to live this year—so that when the time came I could let go completely and be as sick as I needed to be to heal.

The radiation zapped everything out of me. It was so painful. I felt like my bones were hollow and it hurt just to lie down. That time feels like a blur now, but I remember enough to remember how brutal it felt.

November 30th was my re-birthday. The doctor says it is usually a non-event because it is just a bag of stem cells transfused into the blood—not so different from a blood transfusion. But I wasn't going to have my rebirthday be a non-event, so Emery, my friend from New Orleans, came and brought with her a half-pound of rose quartz; Mom came with a citrine ring, the birthstone of November; Dad came; my brother Steve and his wife Sasha; my little sister Sarah; Chris the Buddhist chaplain (who showed up serendipitously); and the doctor came. We held hands as the stem cell bag was hung and Chris said a prayer for us.

Steve put on some music and it was sort of like a party, until I told everyone I needed to have some time alone with my new stem cells. I shuffled everyone out pretty quickly and then I threw up and started shaking uncontrollably. The nurse came in and gave me some drug and mostly hugged me, and then I asked for Steven and he sat by me while I drifted into sleep. Apparently I was having an anxiety attack unlike ever before.

I really don't have much sense of time in the hospital, but maybe a week or a few days later I started getting fevers as high as 105. That was scary. I was delirious. At one point I had come to the conclusion that my donor must be gay, and I wondered if that meant I would be gay too. The nurse looked at me and said, "No, you are just confused."

So they put me on steroids and I puffed up like a marshmallow or one of those peeps candies that they sell at Easter time. That sucked because not only did I feel shitty, I looked really weird too.

And then things started clearing up. I've "engrafted," which means [the] new stem cells are growing in my body as if they were my own. This is awesome.

I was even supposed to go home tomorrow, except that I got a fever the other night and that is postponing things a few days until they figure out why.

The hardest part about being here is living in an incubator. I'm in isolation, and it is making me so depressed. I don't know how I am going to last another day in here.

And my legs are weak. It's strange feeling so weak. I don't like it. I can only walk short distances before tiring out.

The other thing that is happening is that I am getting very nostalgic and melancholy about August and how beautiful things were then before this sudden change of life. I was working at a radio station and a coffee shop, dating, doing outside things like kayaking and star gazing and hand holding. I've been sick for four months now. You would think I would have gotten used to it by now, but it is like the shock of it all is hitting me all over again, full-force. And I'm in it. I'm in shock. Life can change on you so quickly. It can, and it does.

I wanted to wait to write you when I had something more uplifting to say, but that just wouldn't be real. I want you all to know that I am doing okay. I am doing very well in fact. I'm just sad. I know it will pass.

All my love,
Ibby