Wednesday 20 June 2007
Yippee Counts are recovering
Yippee my counts are recovering - I am Day 8 today and my white cell count is 0.6 and my neutrophils are 0.26!!! Yeah, yeah, yeah!! I am feeling heaps better this morning as well. Life is just going to get better from here on. All of the prayers are certainly working.
Tuesday 19 June 2007
I look like a balloon
I currently look like someone has blown me up like a balloon. I have a lot of fluid retention with my weight hovering around 53kg to 56kg which means I am carrying around 25% more weight than usual (45kg is my usual weight). My skin feels tight and stretched and all of the excess fluid is quite painful to touch. The reason for the fluid retention is that the chemo drugs put a lot of strain on your heart and it struggles to get rid of all of the additional fluids I am receiving - I am on 3 different IV antibiotics, IV potassium, IV magnesium, artificial feeding (TPN), albumen (a blood product), blood transfusions and platelet transfusions. So each day I am pumped with litres of fluids in addition to what I am orally consuming (lots because believe it or not even with all of the fluids being pumped into me I am constantly thirsty!!). So during the day I am regularly pumped with Lasix to keep the fluid retention under control.
I had a few dramas with my heart over the weekend and I had to be connected to a wireless ECG machine for a few days. It was such an amazing little machine. All the dots were connected to me and I had this little box that transmitted data wirelessly to the Coronary Care Unit so that they could closely monitor me. The whole medical world continues to fascinate me. I had been having chest pains of various sorts for a few days and then on Saturday night I had some more and they did a blood test. When your heart goes into distress it releases enzymes into your blood. The blood test results on Saturday night showed those enzymes in my blood which is why I had to be monitored. It was quite funny actually as on Sat night I went to bed at 8pm. At 9.30pm Dr Hill walked into my room and turned the lights on and started talking to me about the problems with my heart. At this point I did not know that my ECG from earlier in the night was not normal and I did not know about the blood test results, so I was quite confused about what was going on!! I had to get my nurse to reexplain everything once I woke up a bit more!!
I am now off the heart monitor as the pains have stopped and the ECGs are now normal. I have a little fluid around my heart but it is nothing to be concerned with as it should fix itself as I get better.
Unfortunately the diarrhoea has hit pretty hard again and I have a sore behind again. It is not as bad as last time though which is good. This time it seems to be my mouth and throat that are causing the most pain. Even swallowing water feels like razor blades. I am on an oral anaethestic that eases a little of the pain. I also resorted to having a Fentinyl patch and that takes the edge off everything.
I am on day 7 today and my counts are still 0 so I am not sure I will be able to match the last count recovery of 8 days. I suspect this time it will be around the 10 to 14 days.
The bronchoscopy results did not show any signs of infection in my lungs. Once I have recovered from this stem cell transplant I will have another CT and PET scan and hopefully the results will be good. Kerry said not to worry about any of that at the moment and to just focus on recovering.
My moods have been very up and down lately with the down part usually the morning and the up is the afternoon. When I first wake up in the morning I usually feel miserable due to everything hurting or just feeling off. It then takes me hours to have breakfast and get myself out of bed and showered. It is usually this time of day where I feel I cannot do it anymore. The next thought is always realising I don't have a choice - the chemo making me feel like this has already been given so I just have to ride the wave until I recover! Poor Cam then gets a phone call from me moping about how miserable I feel. He has been great with letting me vent all of my frustrations with being sick and then managing to turn my mood around a little with antics that the kids have done. We have had some really great family visits and that always helps my moods. It is hard to feel sick or miserable when Tiernan and Arielle are about. Poor little Arielle has bronchitus so we cannot see each other for a few days.
Enough of my rambling for the night - it is time I went to sleep. This is the first time in days that I am awake after 9pm!
I had a few dramas with my heart over the weekend and I had to be connected to a wireless ECG machine for a few days. It was such an amazing little machine. All the dots were connected to me and I had this little box that transmitted data wirelessly to the Coronary Care Unit so that they could closely monitor me. The whole medical world continues to fascinate me. I had been having chest pains of various sorts for a few days and then on Saturday night I had some more and they did a blood test. When your heart goes into distress it releases enzymes into your blood. The blood test results on Saturday night showed those enzymes in my blood which is why I had to be monitored. It was quite funny actually as on Sat night I went to bed at 8pm. At 9.30pm Dr Hill walked into my room and turned the lights on and started talking to me about the problems with my heart. At this point I did not know that my ECG from earlier in the night was not normal and I did not know about the blood test results, so I was quite confused about what was going on!! I had to get my nurse to reexplain everything once I woke up a bit more!!
I am now off the heart monitor as the pains have stopped and the ECGs are now normal. I have a little fluid around my heart but it is nothing to be concerned with as it should fix itself as I get better.
Unfortunately the diarrhoea has hit pretty hard again and I have a sore behind again. It is not as bad as last time though which is good. This time it seems to be my mouth and throat that are causing the most pain. Even swallowing water feels like razor blades. I am on an oral anaethestic that eases a little of the pain. I also resorted to having a Fentinyl patch and that takes the edge off everything.
I am on day 7 today and my counts are still 0 so I am not sure I will be able to match the last count recovery of 8 days. I suspect this time it will be around the 10 to 14 days.
The bronchoscopy results did not show any signs of infection in my lungs. Once I have recovered from this stem cell transplant I will have another CT and PET scan and hopefully the results will be good. Kerry said not to worry about any of that at the moment and to just focus on recovering.
My moods have been very up and down lately with the down part usually the morning and the up is the afternoon. When I first wake up in the morning I usually feel miserable due to everything hurting or just feeling off. It then takes me hours to have breakfast and get myself out of bed and showered. It is usually this time of day where I feel I cannot do it anymore. The next thought is always realising I don't have a choice - the chemo making me feel like this has already been given so I just have to ride the wave until I recover! Poor Cam then gets a phone call from me moping about how miserable I feel. He has been great with letting me vent all of my frustrations with being sick and then managing to turn my mood around a little with antics that the kids have done. We have had some really great family visits and that always helps my moods. It is hard to feel sick or miserable when Tiernan and Arielle are about. Poor little Arielle has bronchitus so we cannot see each other for a few days.
Enough of my rambling for the night - it is time I went to sleep. This is the first time in days that I am awake after 9pm!
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