December 3, 2008

News Update:

I have been moved to a private room at the James. I am still on the 8th floor, but I am now in room 833. The phone number to my room is (614) 293-5559.

Date------Day----WBC----ANC--------Hgb--------PLT---- Transfusions
19 Nov------78----26.9----14,000------8.3--------11----------1 Unit P
21 Nov------80-----12-----9,300-------7.9---------55---------1 Unit B
24 Nov------83----5.1-----2,200------10.1--------179-------------N/A
28 Nov------87----2.2-----1,500-------9.9---------286------------N/A
1 Dec------90----3.4-----Unknown----10.0--------255------------N/A
2 Dec------91----4.0-----Unknown----10.5--------250------------N/A
3 Dec------92----5.0-----Unknown-----9.5--------183------------N/A

Since I am not on the 10th floor the nurses are not providing me with my ANC Counts even though I have requested them, so I will see if my Nurse Practitioner will get them for me later. I am assuming since my White Blood cell counts have been above 2.2 each day my ANC has to be above 1,500 so that is a good thing.

They got my daily medications figured out late in the afternoon yesterday. I was getting worried because they did not have any orders for me except for the Chemo, the dreaded Dexamethasone eye drops & Dexamethazone pills along with Zafram for nausea. There were no orders for my antiviral, anti fungal or the antibiotics until later in the evening.

My day got a little depressing in the afternoon, my roommates doctor called her entire family in for a meeting to inform them she was dying. At first you could hear a pen drop & then her daughters just started sobbing. I had just got out of the shower & was sitting on my bed when the Dr did this, it was horrible. I could not get out of the room initially because they had so many people in there & they were blocking the door. I felt so out of place & it was so awkward for me I felt like I was intruding on a very personal moment, to top it if she was not that much older than me. When I finally did get out of the room I stayed out in the hallway for a very long time. I could hardly walk back my bones were hurting so much. I was gone so long that when I got back into my room they had already moved her out to a private room.

I talked to Marcus he is going to come up to see me tonight after he goes home & checks on the family. Speaking of which, poor Zack had another bad day at school. His teacher called me, he had two episodes with kicking at other kids. She put him on blue the first time & then later on the playground he did it again so she moved him to red & that is when I got the phone call. She talked with him about him & she wanted me to know he was very upset & made said to her at one point I just don't want my mommy to be sick. I was able to talk with him when he got home from school & Marc did as well. Zack did calm down a little & read me his book for homework & even kissed my picture on the phone & hugged the phone. I miss all the kids but I must say Zack is the most dependent right now, he really needs me the most because he does not understand what is really going on.

By 8pm I had such a raging headache from all of the days activities, the chemo & lack of sleep for days they gave me any Oxycodone & 2 Tylenol. I was still up at 1am so they gave me some Benadryl to try to help me sleep. I think I finally fell asleep sometime after 2am. So far with this round of Chemo it has not taken too bad of a toll on my body, most importantly no nausea no fevers. The other issues I can handle much better even it may not sound like it some days, I will take them over puking any day.

A big thank you goes out to Bill Davies, Patricia Knox & Angie Hunsinger for their very generous donations to my Leukemia Support Fund. The hospital, speciality services & pharmacy bills are steadily pouring in so I know at some point in the near future I will need to readjust my original fundraising goal especially since we had no idea what the costs would be when we set it up. Surprisingly we are getting by better than we expected thanks to all of your help. So far I have been able to set up a payment plan with Mount Carmel, The James will be next. Most importantly I have been able to to utilize the donated funds to cover the out of pocket prescription costs which have to paid for up front. So thank you so much again to all of you, we could not get through this with out all you love, prayers & support.