Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The First Week after the Transplant

The first week after the Transplant were May 16th through May 22nd. Let me explain though how you count days in Transplant World. On the days prior to the transplant itself and you are counting the days TO the transplant are counted as say.....Day MINUS 4 or 2 or 1. The day of Transplant is DAY ZERO and from then on the days are counted as Day PLUS 1 or Day PLUS 6 etc etc. So the days I'm referring to now will be ........May 16th (Day Plus 1) through May 22nd. My white blood cell count was at 3.21 (LOW) on the 16th and the next day it had plummeted to .50!! That's quite the fall in 24 hours, so it seems my blood cells are rapidly disappearing. Let's hope they "appear" as fast when the time comes!! Because of the rapid demise of the cells that means I am beginning to feel the effects of the chemo that took place on the 12th and 13th. In other words......this is beginning to suck. The whole purpose of the chemo though was to destroy my entire immune system. That means I have no cells to fight infection.....I have no cells that will transport oxygen throughout my body and I'll have no blood cells to clot my blood. This is what we want though so now my numbers are reflecting it's working! I am thirsty all the time but when I drink water, especially cold water, it makes me nauseous. And all I want to do is guzzle a cold bottle of water, but I can't. I WILL throw it up. So the only thing I can have are ice chips, or room temperature water, neither one being satisfying. During this week besides throwing up, diarrhea and the above mentioned fun I'm receiving all kinds of fluids when at the BMT clinic as the chemo has thrown my electrolytes into a frenzy. Into my central line I got: potassium, calcium phosphate, sodium chloride, and phosphorus. On the 20th my platelet number got so low that I started to get massive amounts of "little red dots" all over which indicate that my blood's not clotting and sort of bleeding out because it's so thin. On the 22nd I required a blood transfusion and also required a bag of platelets infused through my central line. Also throughout this week I was getting shots of "Zofran" in my belly which was to decrease my nauseousness. My blood pressure was also doing circus tricks along with my pulse and I was not sleeping too well either. At this time , I need to stand up and give KUDOS to my sister Kate and my Mom as all throughout this week I was on so many medications besides the ones for nausea.... like anti virals, anti fungals, antibiotics, anti bacterials, besides my slew of regular medications that they were having to set their alarms for at least 2 different times in the middle of the night to wake up and give me meds. You should see the form my sister made on the computer to keep track of which med and when......it looks like it was drafted by a NASA scientist, I kid you not! And if certain times weren't working or there would be a change in dose etc. she'd go back on the computer and bring it up to date. I am so suffering from chemo brain that I was lucky to be able to read it, much less understand it!! On Thursday the 22nd I started to run a fever and little did I know then that the REAL transplant fun was just beginning........Damn.....I ain't seen nothin yet.

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