Thanks for the support

I finally got up to check my blog. Thank you all for all of the encouraging comments!

As far as visitors went, I had Kate here yesterday, which is always nice. I also had visits from the Doctor team and some med students, but they don't count. It's always nice to see Kate and she has this magical ability to make me feel better, but with all the throat pain and off and on fevers, I was a little crabby. She pointed it out to me (she's not one to sugar-coat) but she took it in stride and kept giving me what I needed. She's really up for wife of the year award.

Like I've said, the fevers and throat pain have been really crazy. One of the problems with a fever is that I can't get blood or platelet transfusions if my temp is above 100F. This is because the body temp just kills off the cells. Well, my temp will often flirt with the limit and stay at like 99.8 and then all of the sudden I'll feel hot and flush and then have the chills and by that point my temp's usually up to like 102. Each time I spike they have to give me tylenol and get up to date blood and urine cultures to check for infection. If my fever is particually bad, I'll wake up shivering uncontrollably... not fun. I can usually tell when my fever breaks because I sweat like crazy for a while and then feel much better.

Yesterday was particually bad because I needed platelets and red blood cells, but it took a while to get my fever under control to give me the platelets. In order to control my mouth pain, I was all hopped up on morphine and then they had to give me benedryl with my transfusion (standard procedure). Well, that made me semi-comotous. It's really hard to keep up with the morphine drip button in that state, so I was half contious, cycling between semi-awake with crazy-pain, and out-like-a-light with no pain. My fever came back after my first bag of red blood cells, so I was only able to get one of the two.

My nurse Marsha convinced me to go onto a continuous morphine drip with the button to boost the effect when I wanted to eat. That seems to have broken the nasty sleep/wake pain/no-pain cycle. I was able to keep under the fever radar (i.e. below 100F) long enough to get 2 bags of blood today. They also increased my morphine dosage today. That has really helped to get the pain under control. Of course, since I started writing this, my temp has spiked again. 102F. That means more blood cultures and all. Hopefully I won't get the crazy chills and sweats tonight.

Kara and Brian came and visited me today. They both work in the area, so it's easy for them to stop by. Still, they've always been really good friends and it's always nice to see them.

Today is day 6. That means I started my neupogen shots yesterday and if all goes to schedule, I should engraft in the next 4-6 days for so. That means, if we stick on schedule, I'll be out of here in 8 days. I can't wait.