Day Four - Monday

Day Four turned out to be an important one. A lot of things changed between 3 & 4.
Monday found me in new places...

Fluid on the Lungs

So, this really started on Sunday, but in addition to my nausea, I was also feeling lie I was catching a cold. This is a very bad thing. So bad in fact, that they pulled in a special respiratory doctor, took chest x-rays (every day for 5 days or so), got me connected to the "Rapid Response" nurses who are sort of expert super-nurses that roam the whole hospital, and put me on oxygen. 

I had coughed up some phlegm (greatest hangman word ever) with blood in it and there was a little fluid on my lungs and they wanted to make sure they could contain it.  I only learned this much later, but remember the brain bleed? Well, the few cases of APL where they lose someone is usually in the early days to a brain hemorrhage. SO they were watching this and my complaints of (probably sinus) headaches very closely and very seriously.

I just remember feeling even sicker than normal and being very frustrated.

Frustration

The roller coaster of blood transfusions and sickness was really getting frustrating. The thing is that as far as I could tell it was postponing my "real" chemo-therapy. They kept pushing it back and feeding me other things. I was now on antibiotic drips, steroid drips, and still taking plasma and saline. 

I was ballooning full of liquid and in fact on Monday weighed in at 211.5 pounds. If you recall I checked in Friday at 187.5. 

What I didn't realize was that the Vesinoid (also called Atra) was really the first part of my chemo assault. Even though they're just pills (4 in the morning 5 in the evening and I will be taking them for 16 months), they are the trigger for everything else, and all of my reactions were due mostly to that.  I learned later that my reactions to it were unusually fast, and unusually quickly resolved--but still normal.

Still--it was frustrating, debilitating, and I was over-working the nurses.  Which is why it was so great that I was moved to a new floor.

New Clean Room - New Clean Me

One of the biggest boons on Monday was the fact that I got to move to a new floor--the Bone Marrow Transplant floor. Apparently this floor deals more especially with leukemics, though my kind is still fairly rare.

But the floor is better setup to ward of external disease, and there is a better nurse to patient ratio of just 1:3. 

My room is much larger--though when I arrived I was still pretty much tethered to the bed through IVs and oxygen--but the feeling of some space helped a lot. It also overlooks the lake, so if I sit up and peak out or walk over to the window (once untethered) the view is beautiful. The helicopter takes off right outside too.

One of the greatest things was that I was allowed (while still tied up to oxygen, etc.) to stand in my room and give myself a sponge bath. What a wonderful feeling to be clean after so many days of night sweats and overall wallowing in your own stench. 

It was like I was starting over and on a very positive note.

Thanks to my Friends

In addition to some of my friends on the outside, who I still think to thank daily for all of their love and support, I am fortunate to have a couple of friends on the inside. Though I would have been moved somewhere I'm sure--I believe my condition warranted it--I also feel sure that my friends had some say in getting me here, to the Bone Marrow ward and I love it. Maybe they didn't--but if they did--thanks--it has helped my recovery more than you know.