Waiting

Today is Tuesday March 17th 2009. Today I received the last dose of any sort of chemo type drug with my last dose of Methotrexate. It's day 11 post transplant, and if anyone could feel sicker than I do right now, then they are really sick. All the yucky side effects have really kicked in. The mucusitis is really awful, and the nausea is very full on. My hands ache, my elbows are sore, my underarms hurt. My throat hurts, my stomach hurts, I'm so blown up with fluid I look like the Michelin Mans daughter. My mouth is full of ulcers, and my hair is all falling out again. Lucky I didn't have much to lose this time because I got Dad to trim it all off first. The doctors are telling me that any day now I should start to see some positive signs that the white cells are starting to come back. This will be the first indication that the new bone marrow is beginning to engraft. This cannot come fast enough for me. I'm having platelets nearly every day, and they've taken me up to the next level of antibiotics. I'm also being desensitized to Vancomicin, because the lab has grown a bug in my daily blood cultures, which is no doubt responsible for my high temperatures. I had Vancomicin before, but I had a nasty reaction to it, so they decided I must be allergic to it. Now they feel that they need to use it, so I have to become not allergic to it. I currently have about ten different things running into me at once. Naso feeds, TPN feeds, antibiotics, you name it, and when they hang the platelets up, it's eleven. I really hope the next time I post on this blog I'm feeling a whole lot better.