Day + 11

Well the team here certainly loves to get started early!  one nurse came in about 4:30 to take labs, I was half asleep but so easy these days to just flip him my ” tubes that are temporarily connected to my chest” and keep on sleeping.  Then 1/2 later, vitals – BP, Pulse temp, weight, …and so on until about 1:00.  The engraftment officially started, which means the early morning labs showed an increase, very small, but it proved the stem cells were re-producing, white cells that were so low, TLC ; too low to count, now had a measurable value and my platelets moved from a low off 11 to 14. HUGE and Fantastic news!  the downward trend is over.

Before I forget, I must tell you that I lost the bet on the rash diagnosis.. I believed it had to do with the pain med and I stopped taking it for 48 hours.  The rash did NOT go away and the Pain went from average of 2- 8 on a scale of 0-10.  So I paid the price for ignorance, but since I can be pretty stubborn, I took it and “manned” up . ha ha

The Dr. was right of course – the rash was caused by the engraftment process and it started earlier than expected, so it took them 48 hours and the values to start trending upwards to confirm it.

It was still early, about 8:30, and I was getting pretty stiff from sitting in bed too much.  So I put a sheet on the floor in the corner of the room and started some stretching exercise from yoga, then room service brought my breakfast and decided to move to the floor because it was comfortable. Now, if you can image, the nurse pops in to start the first IV…opps!  but she was very cool and thought it was pretty cool that I was doing what was good for me. So I did not get up and continued .  When I finished eating, I had just stood up and sat on the side of the bed, when 2 Doctors pop in ! UGH…they walk right over to me corner and me, see the blanket and food tray and give me the stern look of “WHAT?”  I explain and tell them I am done and they can move the tray and sheet now.  One gives me a bit of a smirk, holding back a laugh, I am sure, but the other one is much more stern. He went right into the drill about symptoms and med, etc..  they finished and left and I just cracked up!  Another first for the team at station 94.

I live by the rule ” Life begins when you get out of your comfort zone”.

My son, Sean who is here visiting from CO, basically told me ” don’t be an idiot – get the tramadol for 2 more days and then you can get off it”.  I listened and called the nurse.  30 minutes later, everything was good again.  Gotta love when your kids give you good advise. He is now 26 and he learned well and had a few life experiences under his belt on the medical side, now I am letting him step up and be my caregiver for a few days. I LOVE HIM more than he will ever know.  Lauren you are a lucky woman to have him for the rest of your life. XO  ( OK he is even more lucky to have you for the rest of his life, but you still have to share him with me…)

Whewww..the tears flowed on that one….

The team here had me hooked up to IV drips continuously from 9:00 – 1:00.  so many things.  Mostly antibiotics to be proactive against potential infections since I have nothing left to fight anything.  No side effects.  Then I got a Potassium drip.  I was not familiar with that and asked why.  Potassium is needed in the normal range to keep your heart working. It helps send the electrical currents to your heart to keep the rhythmic beat happening.  If it drops low, than the heart rate can skip or worse..  OK that is a very important boost – put it in, stat !

Bob L. sent me a text to check in on my ” spa visit and wanted to know if they were bringing me cocktails?  so I sent him a pic of my Gatorade and my IV tree of goodies.  You know Bob, he wanted to know if they were filled with Gin!   I told him I did not know but either way they made me feel really good, so bring it on. He is my latest BFF from the east coast and checking in via text every day.  XOXOXO

Happening at the same time was the Lavaman in Hawaii that Cindy and Steph were racing in, that I mentioned in the last post.  So Karen ,who lives in Hawaii, and I were also texting.  In MN the skies were white overcast for 3 days and I needed some blue ski pictures so I asked Karen for a couple.  She sends me 2 from her back yard that includes a lime tree.  She tells me that her and Dallas call it their ” Gin & Tonic” tree!  How lucky are they?  She should hook us up for our annual meeting with home grown limes.  ( I did not even know you could have a lime tree in your yard?  that is like foreign to me from CO.)

I requested another home made dinner from Sean & Lauren and off they went to grocery shop.  Came back a few hours later with Baked Talapia, rice and peas!  What am I going to do when they leave today?  CONNEE – are you up for the task?  Maybe your Duluth Finlander breakfast with GF potatoes instead of tater tots?   And Sean and Lauren are both Engineer computer/business ultra intelligent brainiacs, so they spent time analyzing my Cintas laptop, work processes, special order and mat manual processes and we came up with a PLAN – OMG! even if 1/3 of it works, I am going to save 5-10 hours a week in tracking and manual organization.  They just think different and have the on hands experience from their jobs with Twitter and a start up Denver co.  Stay tuned,,,, if we get it set up and it works for me, I will definitely share!

Before they left me for the day, he set me up with his flipping amazing headphones and put Plex on my laptop, so I could watch Jumangi in my new ” MOVIE EXPERIENCE” in the room.  It was too good, because even with the final painkiller and the sleeping aid, I still  made it to 1:00 AM and then crashed into dream world.

The day started a bit rough but ended as one of my best days so far.  Thanks to everyone again for the connections and support.