In the hospital and doing great -- August 23, 2011

In the hospital and doing great -- August 23, 2011

Good Morning!!!!

Well it’s about 0500 and I’m back in the Hospital and things are going pretty darn well. I am in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit and I’m living large (I’m getting large too – yikes). Oh well!

My room phone number is 302-733-6124. Just so you know the phone is on one side of the room and the comfy chairs are on the other. After I am hooked up for chemo and the IV pumps are going I usually sit in the comfy chairs or go for a walk. Lying in bed is a no-go for me. The point is when the phone rings it can be quite a production to get to it; I often don’t answer it in time.

Remember last week when I mentioned my blood and platelets were bouncing back, well they sure have. My platelets were 37,000 Thursday (that’s not good! 50K is considered safe for chemo) yesterday they were 121,000. That is cool beans because although still a tad low from normal (140,000 is normal), I can pretty much do any kind of workout I want and not hurt myself. That is a big deal to me.

I bought some of those exercise bands a couple of weeks ago and held off using them. I used to think they were for pansies, but like many things these days, I’m discovering I was wrong. Those things can really kick your buttocks. BTW if I sat down and wrote a blog about all the things I discovered I am wrong about it, would fill up the entire Internet.

I do have one negative to report. My chemo stays usually start off with an intravenous cocktail of Benadryl, and Demerol as a prep for the first chemo drug called Rituxan. If I don’t get the cocktail I get violent shakes called Rigors. Anyway, my little cocktail can get you pretty stoned for about an hour or so. It was one of the few fringe benefits of chemo. Now that I’m getting used to it, the effect is less intense than it used to be. Now it’s like going to a tailgate party when someone forgot to bring enough beer. C’est La Vie! Isn’t that the way it goes?