It's day-2 today. That means it's two days before I get my stem cells back, actually half of them will be kept in reserve so that, if they fail to 'engraft', they can try again.
To back up a few days...Saturday, Nov 24, I came to the clinic for a shot of Kepivance, a drug that does funky things to the lining of your mouth and throat. This is to reduce the mouth sores the chemo will cause. Sunday and Monday I got the same shot.
Today, I got checked into the hospital. Pretty uneventful until 10 pm when they hooked me up to an iv machine with an antibiotic...
It's now 12:30 am. I stopped typing when the nurse came in carrying my chemo. One big iv bag with about a year's worth. I was handed two cups of ice and told to keep my mouth full of ice while the chemo's going in. When it was done, I finished a little more than 3 cupsful. This is another part of minimizing mouth sores. The ice causes the blood vessels to constrict, reducing the blood supply and the amount of chemo in my mouth tissues. It took about an hour...about halfway through, they brought me a sandwich (i mentioned I was hungry a little earlier).
After the chemo was done, I ate the sandwich. The label said chicken salad but my mouth was so numb from the ice, it could have been anything.
A few minutes ago, they drew some blood. I'm told they won't be back until 7am so it's time to call it a night...what a day.�
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1 comment:
Jerry - good luck with the chemo. That was tricky numbing you with ice before giving you a sandwich--now you can't critique the hospital food. Take care.
Chris Jones
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