Reprieve

I'm home. I can hardly believe it. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine myself back in my hospital room, just so I can open my eyes to see I'm home and get the most incredible sense of joy. You know when you go on an awesome vacation, have a great time, and yet when you return, you realize that there is really no place more comfortable, more relaxing, more YOU than your home. Well, now imagine if instead of a great vacation, you were in a hospital bed for three weeks. Yah, you get the picture.

Continuing from my last post, I had returned back to Unit 57 from the hell-hole known as Cardiology, but it was still a pretty rough time. The side effects of the chemo were in full swing and each day really was a struggle. I couldn't eat much because of my mouth sores, I couldn't have visitors because my counts were so low, and I had to try to time my self-administered shots of fentanyl (narcotic pain med stronger than morphine) so that it would kick in before I had to go to the bathroom. It didn't always work out. Even through an IV, it can take up to three to five minutes for the drug to take effect. And we all know that when you have that kind of GI tract "problem", you don't have a lead time of three minutes! So very often, after a trip to the bathroom I would lay on my side in bed, shaking with pain for a few minutes until it went away or the fentanyl started to take the edge off. It literally felt like I was "being ripped a new one". I apologize for being so graphic and detailed about such an unpleasant and personal thing, but hey, I gotta keep it real.

There's really no way to rest at the hospital. At night, the most I could string together would be about 2-3 hours of sleep. I had an antibiotic IV drip at midnight every night that took about 45 minutes, then the nurse would come in and "flush" the line via another drip which took 15 minutes, so there wasn't much point in trying to go to bed before 1am. Every night at 4am was blood work and vitals. At 7am they came to weigh you and at 8am was meds. After that, it's constant flow of people throughout the day to clean the room (twice a day), change the garbage bags, change the linen basket, deliver more meds, get your food order for the next day, check vitals, stock housekeeping supplies etc.

Yes, that was the "poor me" portion of the story.

On Wednesday, April 13th they finally began administering the GCSF shots, the ones that get your body producing white blood cells to begin the road to recovery. The goal was to get six "G-shots" over the next six days so my bone marrow would release enough stem cells into my blood system that they could harvest them on Monday, April 18th.

To be honest, when the nurse came to explain the process to me a few days prior to the scheduled collection day, I broke down and cried because it sounded so scary. It seemed there were so many ways things could go wrong and the whole thing sounded way too science fiction to be my reality. The nurse was sympathetic, but then told me she herself had been through it for breast cancer. Not only that, she had it done in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and was by herself. Her family was back in Canada, and while her son tried to be with her, there was some rule about males not allowed in the female section of the hospital or something like that. So now I thought, Jeannie, you're being a big fat baby. Here I am in the cushy Tom Baker with Wayne by my side - I can do this.

My blood work showed that I was "ready" as scheduled on the 18th. They gave me a last minute G-shot very early in the morning (6am?) and then around 10am they brought this giant machine into my room about the size of a two-person arcade game. It was a bit unnerving that it looked like it was from the 50's. Using two valves from my central line, they took blood out of me, processed it in the machine which separated stem cells from all the other stuff, and then returned the blood to me.

The collection went extremely well. The doctor determined they wanted about 2.3 million cells from me. I produced 2.4 billion stem cells in about 2 -3 hours. They normally schedule people across 3 days in case they're either not ready on the first scheduled day, or it could take several 6-hour collection sessions. So I rocked it! I am a super-producer!

The next step was to test the sample to see if it was usable, meaning it was not contaminated with cancer cells to the point where they couldn't "clean" it. I guess they have this process where they can filter the good from the bad, but if there's too many bad ones then it doesn't work. After a few hours, the doctor told us there was only 0.04% bad cells, definitely low enough that they can clean and use my own stem cells. This was a HUGE relief, as it makes things much, much smoother. Otherwise, they would have to find a match with one of my siblings or a stranger donor.

They're pretty quick to kick you out as soon as possible. So the next day (Tuesday), they discharged me to recover at home for a few weeks, to gain my strength and weight back before the next "big bang" chemo where they'll wipe out everything, give me my stem cells back, load me up with G-shots again and hope that I recover with all the cancer gone. That is the goal. 

Right now, I feel ok. I have a lot of muscle mass and strength to get back but it's coming quickly. When I got home I could only take about 3 or 4 stairs at a time before my thighs started burning and I was out of breath. Now,  I can go up both flights at a fairly normal pace, though I am pretty tired and a bit out of breath when I get to the top. My mouth is a lot better and I can eat most things, though my taste is still off and a lot of stuff tastes icky and metallic. I was happy to discover that Oreo cookies are not one of those things.

I'm not entirely sure when I will go back for the Big Bang treatment. I am scheduled for May 12th, but that may change depending on what's going on with my heart. The cardiologist is still working on getting the rate down, but it's a slow and gradual process. I'm hoping that the heart situation is some freaky virus thing and my heart will go back to normal function on its own. The cardiologist's nurse gave me hope that this indeed is what often happens when heart function is affected by chemo or a virus.

So until then, I am going to relish every minute that I'm home and continue to believe that I am going to win this battle and get on with my life in a couple of months. Please all continue to put those same positive vibes out there. I think there is a cosmic total where it all adds up and helps.

I appreciate all the emails and I apologize if I haven't replied directly. But please know how much it helps to hear from you all, and that I miss all of you and can't wait to see you again.