Transplant day -4: Chemotherapy again

They are pumping me full of saline solution – liters and liters of the stuff – to keep my bladder irrigated which is the standard procedure to avoid infection. The corollary effect, however, is a lot of … uh … discharge. The Chemo is starting to make me queasy but it’s being managed. My appetite [...]

Transplant, day -5: Chemotherapy

It was a fairly uneventful day after getting a foley line installed. I received my chemo today along with anti-nauseau drugs, some magnesium and a bunch of vitamin E. I had a diuretic to help get some of the fluid out of my bladder which is being flushed and that’s worked well. I’m tired earlier [...]

Treatment update

We are now in day 5 of treatment. 6 bags of high doses of Ara-C. At first, it wasn’t so bad, it seemed pretty normal. Then Saturday afternoon it just hit me hard: fatigue. Been sleeping a lot. Also been depressed about the lack of internet and phone connectivity in my room, but thankfully the [...]

The Only Thing Worse Than School Administration is Hospital Administration – or – The Drama of the Return … an epic tale in 11 1/2 parts

( For those who know, this is where we insert the < drama > slide into the presentation … )
Part The First: Remember last week when I needed to do a bone marrow biopsy in order to determine how much leukemia was left in my bones? We needed to do this in order to determine [...]

Bone Marrow Biopsy no. 4

Friday I had my fourth bone marrow biopsy. We were testing to find out how much leukemia is still in my bones. Above a certain threshhold, and I’ll need to go back for another round of chemo before the transplant. This will improve my chances with the transplant. Of course, such a circumstance may also [...]

Healthier today …

than I was when I was admitted in to the hospital. Take a at my blook numbers from the day I went to emergency room on February 9th, with those from this past Thursday.

Date
Day
WBC
ANC
Hgb
PLT
Transfusions

10 Feb
Day -3
4.9
147
10.8
25
–

31 May
Today
1.1
264
11.2
68
 

Admittedly, I had a few more white blood cells back then, but remember that nearly every blood cell was [...]

Going to the oncologist

This is a visit I generally dread. Not that I don’t like my oncologist – I definitely do. But I always feel like I have to wade through a bunch of other sickly people and the smell just reminds me that I too am very very ill. Which I’m starting to resent more and more.
So [...]

Chemo brain

I find it interesting – there is a marked cognitive loss … difficult to explain. Sometimes it’s vague, sometimes it’s just short-term memory, sometimes it’s longer-term memory, sometimes it’s just vocalization. It’s a weird impact that has lessoned as I’ve emerged from the Chemo twilight (as I like to call it). And there was a [...]

2nd day of 2nd round of chemo

Last night we started the 2nd round of chemo – that’s considered day 1 or 7; today was day 2 – I just got injected with the Daunarubicin. Cumulatively, this is day 21 on the chemo regiment and that’s how the blood chart reads. To minimize confusion, I will use that number. It’s day 24 [...]

Who shall live and who shall die?

Ever since this whole episode of my life started, my mind has zoomed in the Yom Kippur prayer that asks, in the new year, “Who shall live, and who shall die”, and then goes on to list all the various ways a person may die. The prayer concludes each section that prayer, attrition, and acts [...]

There’s going to be a round 2 of chemo

So my first round of chemo didn’t get the results we were hoping for and I need to have a second round of chemo to try to bring my counts down even lower. Until we get the results of this second round of chemo, we won’t know if I’ll need a bone marrow transplant, and [...]

Day 9 10 (ooops)

(Actually, I’ve been in hospital 13 days now; it’s day 9 10 since they started the chemo)
So I am officially off the chemo now for a few days. We wait and watch my blood counts to make sure the chemo does its job. Statistically, the prognosis is looking good. I know that’s a weird of [...]

Day 8

Well, I’m on my last bag of chemo right now. After this, we watch for infections and monitor my blood production. Early next week, we do another bone marrow biopsy to confirm that we’ve killed off the leukemia, and my doctor has said, statistically, that we’re doing really really well. This is very encouraging. But [...]

Day 5 update

So my white blood cell count is going down. This is a good thing as it means the chemo is working and getting rid of the leukemia. My blood count is down and I’m going to be getting a couple of pints of blood today. This is probably helping to account to for my general [...]

Day 3-4

I now have a score-card in my room which tracks various things, days, bad cells, good cells, platletts. It’s a good thing to have to track progress. Basically, I still have another 3 weeks to go here, but here’s the score today: Looks like I’ll be neededing blood platletts tomorrow but otherwise doing ok. What [...]

Chemo, day 2 update

Been feeling very groggy today mostly due to nausea and associated drugs to keep it away. So I’ve slept most of the day. Had a few visitors with great stuff: Mary and her son’s colorful dinosaur, a rabbi with some Manischevitz grape juice, UPS came by today with big posters from work (thank you everyone), [...]

Chemo, Day 2

Started out pretty much as day 1, except I had a visitor during the injection of the Daunarubicin – a colleague from work (thanks, Peter!). I have to tell you, they really have this down pat – I feel a slight discomfort this morning, a little nauseau, but I’m going to try to find a [...]

Day 1 update

It’s been a largely quiet day. I’ve had a little discomfort with nausea feelings, but they gave me some drugs and it went away. They also made me sleepy so I’ve slept most of the day. Although tired, I still have good resolve to beat this.
I finally made a lap around the entire corrider of [...]

Day 1 – 7:45am

First, technically, this is considered day 1 of chemotherapy and I’m going to use that nomenclature moving forward. It was a largely quiet night. Nurses were in quite a bit to give more bags, but the sleeping drugs helped me not notice them or wake up enough to say ‘hi’ and then roll over and [...]

big pee

4:30am – big pee. probably because they’re pumping liters of saline through my system every few hours. OMG – just filled one of those lavs. only complication? heavy rod with lots of bags and tubes all over the place. back to bed now.