I've been neglecting my poor blog for way too long at this point. The reason for that is that I spent a lot of time in the hospital, even during the one month that I was supposed to be at home recovering. It's not unexpected to have to come in during that time, but I had to go in three times, and each time took nearly a week. The first time I mentioned in my last post.
The second time was my own stupid fault; I really wanted to hang out with the lab so I joined them for Korean barbeque. I thought that since I was cooking the food myself, so it would be kosher for the neutropenic diet. The next day I was vomiting and I had a fever, so it was off to the hospital again.
Then the third and final time I had all of the symptoms of meningitis: light sensitivity, migraine, and a stiff neck. Fortunately, I guess, it was not meningitis, but instead it was the leukemia making its way into my spinal cord and meninges. I say fortunately because apparently the total body irradiation that was already planned was the treatment for this, so we didn't have to go too far out of the way to treat it, and everything was handled in time so as to not cause any problems. Unfortunately, this put me into the hospital several days before expected, and I would not have another chance to go home between then and the stem cell transplant.
Then the snow happened. Everyone was freaking out about it --- understandably so, from what I could gather --- not the least of which was my brother Billy, the stem cell donor, who needed to be here at the hospital at 7 AM for four days straight to get the Neupogen injections that would sprout peripheral stem cells into his blood stream for collection on Friday, February 12th. Due to the snow, Billy eventually just decided to spend that week up here in my room with me. He was going out of his mind by the end of it; it's kind of a wonder that I've held up as well as I have now that I think of it. Or maybe I only think I'm holding up well.
Anyway, while he was getting his Neupogen, I was actually preparing for the stem cell transplant. This involved getting a new super-duper chemo, getting three days of total body irradiation (TBI), and moving over to the bone marrow transplant wing of the hospital. There's not much to say about the chemo; it was brutal for the few days that I felt it, mostly due to the terrible sore throat that made it difficult to eat and due to the raging diarrhea it evoked. The TBI was strange, and left me all tingly for days, but other than the discomfort from lying perfectly still on the table it really wasn't that bad (unless I've conflated the effects of the TBI with the chemo, which is entirely possible).
The hardest part by far has been the transition to the bone marrow transplant wing. The room is much smaller, much harder to work in (since there's no place that could serve as a table), has meaner and less competent nurses, and has spotty wi-fi to boot. The only thing it has going for it is a view that just reminds me how much I want to be elsewhere. Oh, and thanks to Tacrolimus, an anti-stem-cell-rejection drug, I'm now hooked up to an IV 24-7.
In any case, we survived the snow with only a minimum of grumbling from my family, for which I was thankful. Then the transplant came and went --- it was really just like getting any other blood product, so at this point it was very anti-climactic even though the whole family was there (sans kids). Then the family left, and I was left with a reasonable amount of peace and quiet for the next few weeks. I still get plenty of visitors from friends, family, and health care staff, but I generally have enough privacy to watch some DVDs, watch some streaming Netflix (when the Internet works), or play video games.
Since the transplant, things have gone pretty well. As I mentioned, for a while the biggest problems were diarrhea and a sore spot in my throat. Those are all but a memory now, but now the stem cells have engrafted into my bone marrow. This is a good thing, and it's what we wanted to happen, but unfortunately it came with an acute case of graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) in the form of a rash. This might be a good thing though, since GVHD increases the likelihood that the cancer will be 100% cured. In the meantime, they're treating the GVHD pretty well with steroids, so I think everything is actually going pretty well.
There was some talk of me getting out of here this weekend, but I think it's just talk. Currently, all of the expensive drugs are taken care of through various patient assistance programs, though I'm waiting for the voriconazole to ship and to get confirmation on both eligibility and shipment of valcyte, which I think is a drug that will weaken my immune system (to help deal with GVHD).
Other than all of that, I'm currently in a holding pattern, playing "the old lady who swallowed a fly" with my medications. I'm ready to get out of here, so here's hoping we can effect that some time soon.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
In and Out
It's been a little while since I've written, because I've been too busy enjoying life outside of the hospital. My chances of surviving the bone marrow transplant are good -- we think 70% -- but it's not a sure thing, so I've decided that I should just enjoy myself with the time I have until the transplant. And I have been enjoying it, just being at home with Ted, relaxing, watching TV, playing games.
In terms of my health, though, things could be a bit better. I knew when I got out of the hospital last Wednesday that my immune system was very weak, so I tried to be careful. I wear a mask when out in public. I sanitize my hands constantly. It turns out that germs are really hard to avoid, and our bodies do a really good job of fighting them!
That brings us to this past Wednesday. I went in for my infusion for the day, and told them that my throat was a little sore, so they prescribed some antibiotics. Later that night, I had chills. I called the cancer center, and they told me to take my temperature. It was 101.9 F at that point, though three hours earlier it had been 98.3 F. I clearly had an infection, and no way to fight it, so Ted and I left immediately for the hospital.
Ted doesn't like driving; in fact, neither do I. Since we don't have a car, we were fortunate that some of our friends were out of town and that we were borrowing theirs. Ted overcame his reluctance to drive to take me up to the hospital, and we made it there without any problems. By the time we were there, though, I was really out of it.
Things happened pretty fast. They covered me with a heated blanket, and gave me some antibiotics. My fever was pretty high at some point; they weren't constantly taking my temperature, but I could feel it. At some point during the night things must have turned around, because I woke up without a fever the next morning. In fact, I felt pretty good that morning, though I got worse as the day went on. But the important thing was that I was safe.
Over the next few days I learned that it was either a bacterial or fungal pneumonia and they were treating both types just to be sure. I had a CT scan of my chest done, which showed some nodules that made them think it was probably fungal, but I hadn't been given any antifungal medication before I started to feel better. In the end, we're not exactly sure what it was, but the important thing is that it has been treated. During my stay I had some problems with low blood pressure early on, but that went away as they infused me with blood and saline. They also took the opportunity while I was there to do another bone marrow biopsy, which hurt a bit more than the first one though only briefly; I'm not sure what Dr. Rapoport is looking for from the biopsy, but he'll have the results when I see him on Thursday and hopefully it will give us more information at least. Then finally last night, Friday night, I was discharged.
Between my new medicine and the medicine they gave me on Wednesday, I ended up having to shell out more than $500 for prescriptions. Two medications in particular were more than $200: moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin, both antibiotics. All told, I now have twelve pill bottles which contain eight drugs. I still take seven of those, the only exception being a temporary stop on dasatinib, a.k.a. Sprycel, for reasons I'll explain in a bit. That leaves me on the following seven medications: acyclovir (antiviral), allopurinol (prevents gout), amoxicillin (antibiotic), moxifloxacin (antibiotic), ciprofloxacin (antibiotic), pantoprazole (prophylactic gastro-intestinal something or other), and voriconazole (antifungal).
It's really this last drug that interests me so much: voriconazole. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you'd see that as a side effect it can cause "visual disturbances" that occur within half an hour of taking it and last for about 30 minutes. My nurses said that I might notice some changes in my perception of color. I only started taking the voriconazole on Thursday, and I didn't notice anything too odd while I was in the hospital. When my mom was driving me home, everything looked way too yellow; in fact, when I got to the apartment I was kind of weirded out by the fact that my blue apartment door looked green. My TV at home looked really strange, like each individual pixel was shimmering. I figured this was pretty standard hallucination stuff.
Then I went to bed last night, and had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep. I would see things even with my eyes closed, but they were most vivid when I stared at the plain white ceiling. It was really a lot like when you stare at something that's red for a long time, and then look at something white and see the after-image of the same thing in green. Only now, I just had a constant supply of changing after-images.
I could snap myself out of it temporarily, but it would start back up again, and it always started in the same place. It started with words, thousands of words, some moving left and some moving right at about the same speed, of varying sizes and transparency. Every time I tried to read them, but it was almost impossible, like chasing an after-image when the original image wasn't in the center of your vision. I picked up a few words here and there. I remember I saw "time" multiple times. I don't remember the other words, but they were all unremarkable. As I would try to focus on the words to try to read them, the image would gradually change, as if I were zooming out to see that the words were just some part of some larger geometric pattern. Then came a bunch of psychedelic colors and scenes a la 2001, but not quite as vivid; again, more like what the after-image of the trip in 2001 would look like if you could view it in real time. Then my vision would return to normal for a second, as if to tell me that the show was about to start. And start it did.
It felt like I was dreaming, but I was awake. It was almost like the end of a dream, when you're just about to wake up, and your consciousness recognizes the dream but wants to give it a conclusion. You still believe in the dream, but you're aware of what's happening and you can steer the dream to the point of fantasy. It was almost like that in the sense that I had both consciousness and vivid perception, but I certainly was not in control of the things it showed me. And it showed me many things, some fantastical and some mundane, but all of them in amazing detail. I remember an old black man sitting with two of his friends, smiling in contentment. I remember a phoenix flying away from a group of anime adventurers who were protecting themselves with a magical barrier. I remember an old photograph with two men and a woman in it. I remember seeing a young boy throw a magical frisbee into the sky as his entire village looked on in awe, only to chase it up a mountain and discover a golem at the top. And these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Honestly, it's no wonder that a lot of artists turn to hallucinogens for inspiration, because what I saw last night was amazing and beautiful. It was a fantastic experience, which is why I'm doing my best to share it with any readers out there. But ultimately it is just fantasy. Now that the hallucinations are gone, I'm back to wondering about my health and what long term effects, physical and mental, these drugs will have. Right now, I feel mostly healthy and mostly sane, so I'm going to count that in the win column.
I am concerned about one thing, though. My blood counts are low, and they don't seem to be recovering like they should. I don't really know what this means, but I do know that it's probably a bad sign when the doctors don't know what's going on. This is why I've been told to stop taking the dasatinib. I suspect the bone marrow biopsy will shed more light on this particular problem, and I'm not sure that this problem even affects the bone marrow transplant at all, so until I know more we'll just have to wait and see. If all goes according to plan, the bone marrow transplant will happen on or around February 10th.
In terms of my health, though, things could be a bit better. I knew when I got out of the hospital last Wednesday that my immune system was very weak, so I tried to be careful. I wear a mask when out in public. I sanitize my hands constantly. It turns out that germs are really hard to avoid, and our bodies do a really good job of fighting them!
That brings us to this past Wednesday. I went in for my infusion for the day, and told them that my throat was a little sore, so they prescribed some antibiotics. Later that night, I had chills. I called the cancer center, and they told me to take my temperature. It was 101.9 F at that point, though three hours earlier it had been 98.3 F. I clearly had an infection, and no way to fight it, so Ted and I left immediately for the hospital.
Ted doesn't like driving; in fact, neither do I. Since we don't have a car, we were fortunate that some of our friends were out of town and that we were borrowing theirs. Ted overcame his reluctance to drive to take me up to the hospital, and we made it there without any problems. By the time we were there, though, I was really out of it.
Things happened pretty fast. They covered me with a heated blanket, and gave me some antibiotics. My fever was pretty high at some point; they weren't constantly taking my temperature, but I could feel it. At some point during the night things must have turned around, because I woke up without a fever the next morning. In fact, I felt pretty good that morning, though I got worse as the day went on. But the important thing was that I was safe.
Over the next few days I learned that it was either a bacterial or fungal pneumonia and they were treating both types just to be sure. I had a CT scan of my chest done, which showed some nodules that made them think it was probably fungal, but I hadn't been given any antifungal medication before I started to feel better. In the end, we're not exactly sure what it was, but the important thing is that it has been treated. During my stay I had some problems with low blood pressure early on, but that went away as they infused me with blood and saline. They also took the opportunity while I was there to do another bone marrow biopsy, which hurt a bit more than the first one though only briefly; I'm not sure what Dr. Rapoport is looking for from the biopsy, but he'll have the results when I see him on Thursday and hopefully it will give us more information at least. Then finally last night, Friday night, I was discharged.
Between my new medicine and the medicine they gave me on Wednesday, I ended up having to shell out more than $500 for prescriptions. Two medications in particular were more than $200: moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin, both antibiotics. All told, I now have twelve pill bottles which contain eight drugs. I still take seven of those, the only exception being a temporary stop on dasatinib, a.k.a. Sprycel, for reasons I'll explain in a bit. That leaves me on the following seven medications: acyclovir (antiviral), allopurinol (prevents gout), amoxicillin (antibiotic), moxifloxacin (antibiotic), ciprofloxacin (antibiotic), pantoprazole (prophylactic gastro-intestinal something or other), and voriconazole (antifungal).
It's really this last drug that interests me so much: voriconazole. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you'd see that as a side effect it can cause "visual disturbances" that occur within half an hour of taking it and last for about 30 minutes. My nurses said that I might notice some changes in my perception of color. I only started taking the voriconazole on Thursday, and I didn't notice anything too odd while I was in the hospital. When my mom was driving me home, everything looked way too yellow; in fact, when I got to the apartment I was kind of weirded out by the fact that my blue apartment door looked green. My TV at home looked really strange, like each individual pixel was shimmering. I figured this was pretty standard hallucination stuff.
Then I went to bed last night, and had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep. I would see things even with my eyes closed, but they were most vivid when I stared at the plain white ceiling. It was really a lot like when you stare at something that's red for a long time, and then look at something white and see the after-image of the same thing in green. Only now, I just had a constant supply of changing after-images.
I could snap myself out of it temporarily, but it would start back up again, and it always started in the same place. It started with words, thousands of words, some moving left and some moving right at about the same speed, of varying sizes and transparency. Every time I tried to read them, but it was almost impossible, like chasing an after-image when the original image wasn't in the center of your vision. I picked up a few words here and there. I remember I saw "time" multiple times. I don't remember the other words, but they were all unremarkable. As I would try to focus on the words to try to read them, the image would gradually change, as if I were zooming out to see that the words were just some part of some larger geometric pattern. Then came a bunch of psychedelic colors and scenes a la 2001, but not quite as vivid; again, more like what the after-image of the trip in 2001 would look like if you could view it in real time. Then my vision would return to normal for a second, as if to tell me that the show was about to start. And start it did.
It felt like I was dreaming, but I was awake. It was almost like the end of a dream, when you're just about to wake up, and your consciousness recognizes the dream but wants to give it a conclusion. You still believe in the dream, but you're aware of what's happening and you can steer the dream to the point of fantasy. It was almost like that in the sense that I had both consciousness and vivid perception, but I certainly was not in control of the things it showed me. And it showed me many things, some fantastical and some mundane, but all of them in amazing detail. I remember an old black man sitting with two of his friends, smiling in contentment. I remember a phoenix flying away from a group of anime adventurers who were protecting themselves with a magical barrier. I remember an old photograph with two men and a woman in it. I remember seeing a young boy throw a magical frisbee into the sky as his entire village looked on in awe, only to chase it up a mountain and discover a golem at the top. And these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Honestly, it's no wonder that a lot of artists turn to hallucinogens for inspiration, because what I saw last night was amazing and beautiful. It was a fantastic experience, which is why I'm doing my best to share it with any readers out there. But ultimately it is just fantasy. Now that the hallucinations are gone, I'm back to wondering about my health and what long term effects, physical and mental, these drugs will have. Right now, I feel mostly healthy and mostly sane, so I'm going to count that in the win column.
I am concerned about one thing, though. My blood counts are low, and they don't seem to be recovering like they should. I don't really know what this means, but I do know that it's probably a bad sign when the doctors don't know what's going on. This is why I've been told to stop taking the dasatinib. I suspect the bone marrow biopsy will shed more light on this particular problem, and I'm not sure that this problem even affects the bone marrow transplant at all, so until I know more we'll just have to wait and see. If all goes according to plan, the bone marrow transplant will happen on or around February 10th.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Hospital Thoughts
I've been in the hospital since the 11th, I think, and it's the 26th now. For the most part, my treatment hasn't been much of a problem. Except for a few days where I couldn't get my eyes to focus enough to even watch TV, things have been moving along quickly. I suspect that a season of 30 Rock and three seasons of Battlestar Galactica have had something to do with that.
I've been on all manner of drugs, and at some point I just lost track of them. I think before I get out of here I need to get some of this information written down. Maybe I'll also get a log of my blood cell counts.
Among the more eventful days in here: when Katrina visited, she gave me and my advisor, Bobby, mohawks. We figured that since my hair was going to fall out at some point, it would be fun to have a mohawk until that happened. Of course, I was expecting my hair to fall out any day, but it's still hanging in there. I assume it will fall out during the final round of chemo before the bone marrow transplant.
Also fun was Christmas Eve. We had Christmas at the hospital, and I got to open my gifts. My whole family showed up, which was nice, but I was tethered to my IV pole sucking down blood, which put a slight damper on the occasion. Still, we had a good time, I think. Mom is still struggling with everything, but she made it through. She's having a tough time with life in general, and I tried to convince her to talk to her doctor about it, but she says she can only deal with one problem at a time. I hope she can get over this, because I'm really worried about her state of mind after all of this. I just hope that she'll feel better about all of it when the bone marrow transplant is done and when it looks like I'm cured. Only time will tell, though.
Even though my stay has been uneventful and not too bad, I'm itching to get out of here. I want to go back to work as much as I can, because I feel totally useless right now with my life, which is to say my social and professional lives, trapped in limbo like this. More than anything though, I just want to be at home alone with Ted for just a little while, for things to be like they were before I came in here. I miss him so much, and his visits aren't really the same as being with him at home.
The good news is that my blood cell counts are now trending upward, so I'll probably be out of here some time this week. I hope that life can go back to an approximation of something normal, but it's tough to say at this point, with the bone marrow transplant looming over me. I need to start thinking about my research again, and in particular I need to deal with some bureaucracy involving my proposal. Technically I'm supposed to propose by the end of the semester, and while I'm sure I could use this as justification for an extension, I'd like to get my proposal done with. Not to mention... Well, let's just say that Bobby is taking all of this very hard, and I want to make sure that I graduate as soon as possible because it's in everyone's best interest. I would have liked to be able to pad my CV a bit more before getting ready to go on the job search, but it's too late for that now. I kept putting off doing internships, because it never seemed like the right time, and now this summer I'm sure I need to stay in the area for my doctor visits, so it looks like I'm just never going to make it into an internship; I hope that doesn't hurt me too much when it comes to getting a job. Still, all of that is really a long way off, it's just tough not to think about long term goals and challenges after having my life put into perspective the way it has been recently.
Finally, as much as I love Zipcar and think it's a great idea, I don't think it's going to work for me anymore with all of the doctor's visits. For that matter, it's time for Ted to get used to driving again, especially since he'll probably be getting a new, real job this summer. It's time for us to grow up and become more responsible, and I think a part of me is going to really miss grad school when we have to move on, no matter how much I've complained about it. It really has been a special time, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Monday, December 14, 2009
A Post to the LLS Boards
I rarely write such in depth posts, especially to the people I met on the CML board on the LLS web site, but I figured that since it was pretty in depth and it summarized a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about that I might as well include it here as well. Enjoy!
===============================
Things are going very well. My treatment seems to be working as the doctors plan, with few side effects. I'm not lacking for candy, food, or entertainment thanks to friends, family, my Wii, Netflix, and Hulu. The only thing I wish is that my boyfriend could be around more often, but unfortunately he's stuck in College Park giving his students their final exams, and even once he does that he doesn't have a car so he can kind of only get up here based on when my other friends and family are stopping by.
Other than that, things are looking up and I'm excited to see my brother Bobby on Wednesday, since he's getting back in the US after being in Japan for several years doing missionary work. He actually planned this four-month furlough before I was even diagnosed with CML in the first place, so things are kind of working out for us in that regard. My other brother, Billy, is my bone marrow match, and we haven't tested Bobby yet and may not need to. I feel especially bad for my mom... Christmas is her favorite holiday, and for the past few years she was so sad that Bobby wasn't around and that we could only see him over Skype. She was so excited that we were all going to be together this year, but now it's just not going to happen, because my niece and nephew are too young to be allowed to visit. So it looks like I'll be the one on Skype this year.
I think the hardest thing for my mom, and the rest of my very religious family, is that I'm an atheist. My mom seems to think that it means I must have given in to despair now, when really that couldn't be further from the truth. I just feel bad that it's such a struggle for them, and I wish they shared my point of view. If I could, I'd pretend that I had converted to Christianity while in here just to make them feel better about the possibility that I might not make it through this. There are a few problems with that. The first is purely a logistics problem; I'm a terrible liar and I can't keep a secret --- that's pretty much the entire reason I came out to my family when I was 16 years old, since living that lie had been weighing on me very heavily. In fact, I only waited that long because I wanted to make sure I had my driver's license before I told them (because you hear some horror stories about children being disowned). In retrospect, I don't know what I was so worried about. I couldn't ask for a more loving, caring, or accepting family. That being said, the other problem with faking a religious conversion is that I couldn't possibly deal with the fallout. I plan to survive this crap, and recanting my conversion once I'm out of the woods seems too cruel to even consider.
So I'm hoping that my mom can square herself with my beliefs that the world just is the way it is, and there isn't some divine hand reaching out to decide my fate, that all of this is due to chance and not due to either a cruel deity if things end up poorly or a benevolent deity if things work out well.
Thanks for keeping up with me. I've got plenty of time to just think about my situation, so I don't mind sharing if people want to hear it. In fact, I think I'll post this on my blog as well, because I'm guessing my friends and family will be interested in reading this stuff as well. In case I haven't mentioned it in a while, my blog is at http://livingwithcarmichael.blogspot.com ... I'd change the title now that I'm living with "Allistair" instead, but I'd prefer for people to still be able to find my blog.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Living with Allistair
Wow, a lot of stuff happened pretty quickly. I'm kind of loopy at the moment thanks to some Benadryl, but I'm going to try to write a quick post to summarize the past few days.
Thursday I came in to the UMGCC for a regular checkup to make sure my blood was responding correctly to the Gleevec. It turns out that it wasn't. The doctor noticed that my white blood cells were more numerous than they should have been, and a few tests later revealed that my CML has advanced to ALL -- hence the title of this post. Carmichael was a lot more fun than Allistair, because it sounded so very treatable and everything. Allistair, on the other hand, is going to require some serious chemo, followed by a bone marrow transplant.
The next day I was admitted to the hopsital, which is where I am now and where I'll be for the next four weeks. That means that I'll be missing Christmas, New Years, and of course Sigcomm. As much as I enjoy all three of those events each year, I understand that my health is more important so I don't mind getting that in order instead.
My mom is taking it very hard, probably harder than I am. Every once in a while I have some pretty sad thoughts, but I find that if I try to put myself in Buffy's shoes, I feel stronger and more confident that I have the wherewithal to see this through. The one line of thought that really gets to me is when I start thinking about Ted, and how I wish that I had had the chance to marry him, and that I worry so much about how hard he might take it if I were to die. But Ted is strong too, and I know he'll make it even if things don't work out. That being said, I'm Buffy, so I'm going to fight tooth and nail to make it through this safely. One advantage I have now is that this is a more permanent solution; if this treatment plan works, I could be cured, and that would be a nice feeling. It's going to take some time to get there, but it will be worth it.
Currently, I've just started on the serious chemo. This particular bit of chemo is kind of tricky in that it apparently is more likely to cause an allergic reaction than many other kinds. I seem to be doing well, but as a precaution they gave me a shot of Benadryl which made me really loopy for a while. I'm coming out of it now, though, and the initial treatment seems to be working, so I think that I'l be able to do just fine with this stuff.
Other than that, there's not much to say at this point. They added something called a "pick line", which is basically like a semi-permanent IV that they can use to give me IV drugs and to draw blood without sticking me each time.
Installing the thing was quite the experience. The nurse used an ultrasound machine to find one of the central veins in my arm. After poking around in one spot for a little while, she tried a different spot and then had no trouble. In the original spot, I had a hematoma, but that seems to have disappeared and now things are getting back to normal. This line actually consists of a 41 inch catheter that deposits the IV fluids very near the heart; it goes in my arm and feeds all the way in to my chest. It's pretty weird, but pretty cool, too!
Anyway, food is here. Wish me luck on the rest of my stay here in UMGCC. I'm in room 51 on floor 9, if anyone wants to stop by to visit!
Thursday I came in to the UMGCC for a regular checkup to make sure my blood was responding correctly to the Gleevec. It turns out that it wasn't. The doctor noticed that my white blood cells were more numerous than they should have been, and a few tests later revealed that my CML has advanced to ALL -- hence the title of this post. Carmichael was a lot more fun than Allistair, because it sounded so very treatable and everything. Allistair, on the other hand, is going to require some serious chemo, followed by a bone marrow transplant.
The next day I was admitted to the hopsital, which is where I am now and where I'll be for the next four weeks. That means that I'll be missing Christmas, New Years, and of course Sigcomm. As much as I enjoy all three of those events each year, I understand that my health is more important so I don't mind getting that in order instead.
My mom is taking it very hard, probably harder than I am. Every once in a while I have some pretty sad thoughts, but I find that if I try to put myself in Buffy's shoes, I feel stronger and more confident that I have the wherewithal to see this through. The one line of thought that really gets to me is when I start thinking about Ted, and how I wish that I had had the chance to marry him, and that I worry so much about how hard he might take it if I were to die. But Ted is strong too, and I know he'll make it even if things don't work out. That being said, I'm Buffy, so I'm going to fight tooth and nail to make it through this safely. One advantage I have now is that this is a more permanent solution; if this treatment plan works, I could be cured, and that would be a nice feeling. It's going to take some time to get there, but it will be worth it.
Currently, I've just started on the serious chemo. This particular bit of chemo is kind of tricky in that it apparently is more likely to cause an allergic reaction than many other kinds. I seem to be doing well, but as a precaution they gave me a shot of Benadryl which made me really loopy for a while. I'm coming out of it now, though, and the initial treatment seems to be working, so I think that I'l be able to do just fine with this stuff.
Other than that, there's not much to say at this point. They added something called a "pick line", which is basically like a semi-permanent IV that they can use to give me IV drugs and to draw blood without sticking me each time.
Installing the thing was quite the experience. The nurse used an ultrasound machine to find one of the central veins in my arm. After poking around in one spot for a little while, she tried a different spot and then had no trouble. In the original spot, I had a hematoma, but that seems to have disappeared and now things are getting back to normal. This line actually consists of a 41 inch catheter that deposits the IV fluids very near the heart; it goes in my arm and feeds all the way in to my chest. It's pretty weird, but pretty cool, too!
Anyway, food is here. Wish me luck on the rest of my stay here in UMGCC. I'm in room 51 on floor 9, if anyone wants to stop by to visit!
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