We Are In Chicago...

We arrived on Sunday with Southwest Airlines. I love flying Southwest. We had excellent seats although the plane was fully booked.

Getting through Security was a different story. It makes my blood pressure rise every time. People in wheelchairs and on scooters are being directed to a line outside the normal security check line and have to wait until a security officer finds the time to come and get them (which can be never!). At the same time, all arriving people are going through this line too and everybody is pushed to the wall. To make things even more interesting, I had to leave Nico there and go through the normal check-in. After that I could not tell if he is still out there or has someone brought him in. Not a very pleasant experience.

Southwest made up for the struggle by letting us be the first people on the plane and we got to pick the best seats with lots of legroom. Nico could ride his Travelscoot to the the plane. The scooter was taken down to the luggage storage and re-appeared after we landed.

We took the GOshuttle from Midway Airport ($38) to the Aloft on 515 N Clark St. Our room is great! We are on the 15th floor and have a great view over the city. The beds are a dream, I could sleep all day long. There is also a restaurant connected to the hotel ( Beatrix ). We get free breakfast there (thanks again Jana and Chance!) and had also lunch and room service from them. As you can guess, we love the place already. The Warm Pot Roast Sandwich is to die for. I'm glad we are only staying here for 7 days...

Monday morning Nico had his first appointment at the Arkes Family Pavilion on St.Claire St. We had breakfast at the Beatrix and took a taxi to get to the appointment. He gave 20 vials of blood, had an EKG, a chest x-ray and had to pee in a cup. Everything was so well organized, we hardly waited longer than 5 minutes and were done in no time. We also walked over to the Feinberg Pavilion to pick up his meds for next week (Ciprofloxacin, Fluconazole, Ondansetron and Neupogen) at the inhouse Walgreens. His co-payment was $198.

We took the taxi back to the hotel, had lunch at Beatrix and took a long nap afterward. Later we walked to Trader Joe's on East Ontario St. and picked up some edibles for our dinner.

Today was a very easy day. After breakfast we walked to Galter Pavillion on E. Huron St.  for his vein check appointment. It sounds very ominous, but what it boils down to is getting your BP and temperature checked and answering some general health questions. The nurse informed us about the details of the catheter placement and the stem cell collection procedure. We got to see the Apheresis machine in action. It was not any of Dr. Burt's patients, she had to collect 20 million cells, HSCT patients need only 2 millions.

Tomorrow will be a more busy day.....

View from hotel room

Breakfast

Down town Chicago