Day Two - Saturday

I'm actually writing this several days after the fact.  Saturday is a bit of a vague memory at this point, but this should give you the gist. 

Feeling the Love

Jen (my wife) visited today and told me everyone is writing and sending their love. People are gathering up things for me to do, from a PSP to DVDs to books and more. I am really overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and help. 

The great news for me is that people are there to support my wife too. For me, well I have a cadre of professionals looking over my physical well-being, but she has to soldier on like everything is normal, and still fit in time to visit me, all while I am not around to help out at all. Fortunately, her mother was able to come down and has been a tremendous help to Jen and our daughter.  

The Laptop

So, I think it was also today that Jen dropped off my laptop. It was great to see that there is free wi-fi, and that I could even keep up with email. I am sure I would have felt so isolated without it, but the fact that I could connect was tremendous.

And ultimately led to this blog. But today, all I had the energy for was to open it and see that it worked. Then I crawled back into bed.

Fresh Food and Flowers

So, I am not allowed to have fresh flowers, fruit or vegetables and am on a Neutropenic diet. In short, my white white blood counts are so low that I could catch bacteria or a fungus from a plant. This means everything I eat must be cooked.

It also means that people all around me are starting to wear masks--which does make you feel a bit sicker.

In general I ate pretty well all day though and even had salmon for dinner.

Brain Bleed

One of the other things they have to worry about is my bleeding. My blood is not the best about clotting at the moment, and that fact that I am having some bad headaches has everyone worried about internal bleeding of the brain. I am sent for a CAT Scan, and fortunately all came back well.

That's over in the new building and took miles of corridors to get to. It's amazing how big this place is.

Of course, a day with low blood leads to a night of...  

Platelets, Plasma, Blood, and Fevers

So, to help bolster my system I am given a bag of platelets, and two bags of blood transfusions. In addition, they have started me on 2 bags of Fresh Frozen Plasma every 8 hours. This means another bad night of sleep since I need my vitals to be checked every 30 minutes. (I really wish the blood transfusions could be scheduled as day time events :) )  On top of all of that I had another fever, which broke with Tylenol and lots of sweating.

Two nights of heavy sweating making you feel pretty gross when there is no way to clean yourself.

Nurses

Of course it is the nurses who see you the most. I was pretty rough on them--on the particular floor I was on, they don't have to be checking on patients or giving quite this many transfusions normally I don't think--and I kept them very busy.

I have extra respect and love for all nurses after this. It is tremendous the amount of effort and care they put in every day--I'm even tearing up writing this--but wow they are incredible. The care, compassion, and hard work just doesn't stop for them and they all are so cheerful about it all too. 

So if you know (or are) a nurse--hug her/him for me.

So, that--as best as I recall--is Saturday.