Category: My lymphoma and related medical stuff

Boy am I tired. Ninety minute nap this morning and three hours this afternoon. I got home yesterday around 3:30. Of course the boys were quite pleased to see me (huge grins), and decided to express their feelings with a few practical jokes, and playing a few games with me on the Playstation. I almost…

I have been discharged! IV catheter is out – and for first time in 19 days I can walk around without towing the rolling IV stand, which I was attached to by about a four foot tether (the IV tubes). What a relief. As soon as Brigid gets here, I’ll get the disharge papers and…

Pretty much all good news! As expected, my white blood cell count did start rising yesterday – this morning’s blood test showed the count had gone from 0.1 to 0.6 since the day before. To get discharged I need the count to go above 1.0 and stay there for two days, my mouth sores have…

A couple of little developments today. While my white cell count has not really started up as of this morning’s 5 AM blood test – it was 0.1 – my red blood cells and hemoglobin numbers had improved after the transfusions of whole blood and platelets yesterday. And as the today went on, I realized…

I missed posting pictures from the past two days, so here are the visitors. Here is Sue Carmody, who has worked at Sloan Kettering for a long time, paying me her second visit yesterday. She is a friend of Bill Connolly and Tom Crowley. And here is Dick Gunderman and Joe, who visited me on…

Well so much for not receiving any whole blood while I’m here. This morning the team came in and said, today you are getting whole blood and platelets. My hemoglobin hit 8.0, which is the point at which you are given blood when on chemotherapy, and my platelets went below 20 (14 actually) so I…

Not really any change today. We are still at zero for the cell counts and waiting for the “engrafting” and the counts to go up. Mouth and throat no change, still very manageable with the morphine pump. The new attending physician – the transplant docs take two week turns making rounds on the floor and…

An uneventful day (uneventful is good). The staff came in, said things were going well, and I got another platelets transfusion. My mouth and throat seem better. Perhaps because of the lidocaine mouth rinse and the morphine pump. The nurses can see how many times I’ve given myself a dose, and said that I’m using…

I didn’t post yesterday (so this post is likely to be a jumble) for the following reason: around 8 o’clock as I was firing up the laptop the nursing tech came in to do the vital signs, including temperature. She does everything and then says, “Your temperature is 38° (Centigrade). You have a fever. Are…

Today was a day of a few firsts. I got my first transfusion. I had my first return visitor (besides Brigid). I set a personal record for visitors (6). For the first time, I talked and saw the boys on a videophone. I threw up for the first time. And I got my first dose…