Voldemort had a BMT.

Gus and I were watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night, and during the scene (**if you haven't seen the movie and don't want a spoiler, stop reading here**) where Voldemort is being "reborn" in the graveyard, Gus made an astute observation. After Wormtail has dumped that icky, fetus-like mini-Voldemort into the cauldron, he has to add some special ingredients (so special you can't even find them at Dean & Deluca) to the pot in order to bring Voldemort back to life. One of the ingredients is Harry's blood - he goes over to Harry and cuts his arm, and then shakes the blood off the knife into the cauldron. Voldemort is then "reborn" into a super creepy serpent-y dead-looking dude (convincingly played by Ralph Fiennes). Gus turns to me during this and says, "Voldemort had a bone marrow transplant." In the video below, fast-forward to the 2 minute 23 second mark, and you can see for yourself:





Mine was much more sanitary. But anyway, he totally had a wizard BMT! It's weird how none of this stuff ever occurred to me - I never really noticed leukemia or BMTs or anything like that in movies or books or anything like that. Now it's everywhere I look. Now I realize that the Voldemort thing is a stretch (but a funny stretch), but seriously - ever watch House? What I'm about to blog won't sound plausible, but I swear it happened. I was in family housing (after induction, before the transplant) flipping channels on the TV, and I was literally hitting the "up" button really quickly, not even stopping for more than a second or two on each channel. The second I got to the USA channel, I see/hear Hugh Laurie saying, "She has a blood disorder. She needs a bone marrow transplant."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously?! I was on that channel for 2 seconds and I caught mention of a BMT (not what I wanted to think about at the time). What are the odds? Another incident happened during my inpatient stay for the transplant, before the actual BMT, while I was reading The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (a really cute book, BTW). In the story, the main character's father is dying of leukemia. !!! I won't spoil the book for those that haven't read it yet (it's really a cute, fun beach read, besides this one leukemia thing), but I was amused that I'd managed to find the one book in my collection to read that mentioned leukemia. Another incident during my transplant stay - I borrowed Fargo from the social worker (I realize this sounds odd, as Fargo is a pretty dark movie, but I wanted to see it), and I'm watching it, and there's that one scene where the main character meets up with an old high school friend and he tells her that his wife died of leukemia. Turns out he's lying, but I had to press pause and laugh for a second at that one. And my stay for the BMT coincided with the beginning of the promotional campaign for the movie My Sister's Keeper. Needless to say, I skipped that one in the theatres (although I really enjoyed the book a few years ago).

Of course my life kind of centers around leukemia and I've made some really amazing friends who have gone through or are going through the same things I've endured these past 6 months - I know it's just a circumstance of my environment. But I just find it a bit embarrassing and shocking to think that leukemia never even really entered my bubble of a universe before it actually happened to me. I mean, I'd see those St. Jude commercials with the bald children and think that it was really sad, but that's about as far as it went. I obviously can't make up for lost time or anything, but I definitely plan on being proactive from here on out. I'm meeting with the coordinator of the DC area Light the Night walk this coming week - we're going to discuss fundraising ideas over lunch. I must admit I feel pretty special that she's meeting with me personally, so I'm hoping I can apply her expertise and our team can raise a bunch more $$$.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to our team - I can't believe we've raised almost $1,900 without doing any active fundraising! But I still have a goal of raising $5,000 - so I'm posting the info again in case anyone wants to join the team or help us raise $$$.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk - Team Imagination Domination

To donate, choose an amount and click on the red button "Donate To Team", and to join the team and walk with us on October 17th, scroll down to the bottom and under the yellow bar that says "Join Our Team Now", click on the red button that says "Join". Like I said before, I'll be contacting our team members soon so we can get organized, but recruit friends and coworkers to walk with us because the more the merrier! Literally. And you get to carry a lit balloon - which is pretty cool.

*steps off soapbox*

I'm off to frost my coconut cupcakes - this is how deprived I am: I wanted a cupcake, but there are NO bakeries/cupcake stores in our area that sell a decent cupcake. We've got grocery store "bakeries" but that's about it. So I had to make my own. I'm making these:

Mmm. Cupcakes.