City of Hope. I Hope.

January 6, 2012

Today, I went to the City of Hope for the first time. We (Dad, Kristen and I) took the wrong road getting there, and ended up driving through a rough neighborhood on our way. It put a bad taste in my mouth. Once we arrived, everything went really smooth. All the staff was really attentive and appeared to honestly be concerned about my well being.

I met with Dr. Leslie Popplewell for the first time. She is the clinical associate professor in charge of the Lymphoma patients. She was really informative, and explained everything in a manner that Kristen and myself could understand.

After explaining the general details of the upcoming treatment, she asked if I wanted to go ahead and get the bone marrow biopsy completed. The bone marrow was to be extracted from both hipbones. I reluctantly agreed…. Here are the highlights.

1. The nurse had me lay down on my stomach, and pulls my pants half way off.
2. She then proceeds to scrub the area that will be worked on. (Deep scrubbing of my backside)
3. Several shots of lidocaine
4. Then a very painful aspiration of bone marrow from the left hipbone. And the right side.
5. While the Dr. was working on the right side, my left butt cheek started to spasm from the lidocaine.

Overall, I left the biopsy in pain, embarrassed and little bit dizzy.

I feel that I will continue to pursue my treatment at the City of Hope. I felt comfortable there.

After coming home, I looked at the national rankings of Cancer Centers in the county and City of Hope was #17 last year. UCLA was #10 and Cedars Sinai was #32. Dr. Popplewell did her residency at the # ranked hospital in the country (somewhere in NY). I think that place is as good as I am going to find.

On the way out, we took the right roads and the hospital actually appeared really nice from the freeway as we were driving away. A better ending than beginning on my first day at City of Hope.