Yesterday I received my bone marrow transplant. I don’t want to say it was uneventful, because, well that’s the reason we’re all here. But it was pretty uneventful, which is good. I got a big bag of Nancy’s blood and marrow transfused into me over a 3 hour period along with lots of fluid. I didn’t have any big reactions. I was mostly just very tired (that’s the theme around here these days). It was exactly the experience were hoping for and Nan’s marrow was absolutely perfect. My nurse described the transaction as if the chemo and ATG were making holes and space inside my bone marrow, and yesterday Nan’s marrow cells were going to make their way into those spaces, make it their new home, and start growing new blood products. Now we just have to wait 11-21 days for that last part to start happening. Ugh.
I don’t think I have yet to describe how the days are tracked in the transplant world. Yesterday, transplant day, was Day 0. All the days leading up to that day were negatives, Day -1, Day -2 and so on; I was admitted on Day -6. That makes today, Day +1 (99 days until this blog self-destructs!). So even though I have been in the hospital for 8 days now, I’m only on Day 1. It’s like time travel! Just not in a good way.
So, what’s been going on the last couple of days? Welp, as you know I had some serious reactions to the ATG, which is both quite common and thoroughly unpleasant. This happened again the day before the transplant which was supposed to be my “rest day”. Not quite. I had pretty much the same reactions I described in my “ATG-Chemo Cocktail – Shaken not Stirred” post, minus the nausea, thank God. This was made more frustrating by the fact that this hospital really wants to protect my liver (apparently more than I do) and therefore will not give me Tylenol on demand. I mean you’d think I was asking for heroin or bath salts the way they react to my request for some simple Tylenol. No, first my fever must get to a particularly awful range until they will even consider giving it to me. The chemo is apparently already doing a number on my liver, so they don’t want to do any more damage by giving me Tylenol without a serious reason. They also don’t want to mask the fever so that they know where it is coming from. I DON’T BLOODY CARE WHERE IT’S COMING FROM, GIVE ME THE DAMN DRUGS! No. This was the conversation that happened several times between me and my poor nurse who happened to have me on 2 of my bad nights (I’m sure she has since requested to be moved elsewhere on the floor). Anyway, I spoke to my sister Nancy and she said this is standard protocol at any hospital, and I basically just need to deal with it. Nancy’s word = law. Luckily, I have not had another fever since the night before the transplant.
Aside from all that loveliness, I’ve had a rash/hives on my legs and arms for the last several days that won’t go away. It’s really attractive looking. My feet also feel like they are on fire all of a sudden, so that’s fun. They just switched up my antibiotics a few minutes ago to try and help with both of these things, I hope it works. Also, all of the fluid they gave me with the transfusion built up a bit causing me to be short of breath last night. I got Lasix again and oxygen overnight which helped a lot. I’m back to breathing normally today.
In other news, my knight-in-shining-armor of a husband just hooked up our Amazon Firestick to the hospital TV, so I can watch all sorts of stuff without having to balance my brand new iPad (I love it, thank you Allen & Company!) on my belly when I’m trying to fall asleep. The things this man has done for me in the past week, I can’t even describe. Yet.
