Day 13 – transplant plus 5

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 you having chills?

Well 38° centigrade is 100.4° fahrenheit. That’s 100point4, not exactly a big deal.

But in very short order, the tech came back looking for a urine specimen, a big dude showed up with a chest x-ray machine and took a picture, a resident came around and felt me up, the nurse took six blood cultures, and then cultured my medi-port and all three openings on my IV catheter.

Then I was given two different antibiotics by IV.

Nancy my RN last night said, “your fever arrived right on schedule” and tonight a different nursing tech said “Your had your first fever last night? Well when you have your first fever it’s a big shebang.”

The mild elevation cleared up quickly, but I ran out of time to do a posting.

A few changes in things related to my mouth and throat pain and a few more visitors.

Yesterday I got a morphine pump, which allows me to inject1/2 a milligram of morphine through the IV, as needed (but not more often then 15 minutes.) I had been receiving one milligram of morphine every four hours, so it doesn’t take a math whiz to figure I could get more morphine with the pump. The staff also said that another option was to have the pump automatically give me one milligram every hour and that’s what most people settle on. But I think I’ll stay with this configuration, where I have some control.

And it works very well. It’s easy to get relief from the mouth and throat pain. If I’m going to do something with my mouth (like talk a lot) they suggested taking a dose first.

Yesterday I got a visit from Steve Valerio and his wife Jennifer. Steve was the match secretary and then the president of the North Jersey Rugby club for some of the time I was the club coach. A very charming couple (especially Jen). They gave me the book “Coach”, where writers reflect on the impact coaches had in their lives. And Steve wrote a beautiful note in the front of the book.

I also got a visit today from another player I coached, Greg Markowitz. He’d donated some platelets and then came up to see me. But I forgot to take his picture!

Also, got my first shot of Neupogen – the drug which stimulates my bone marrow and newly transplanted stem cells to start producing white blood cells. If my good fortune continues and everything works out, I think it’s realistic to hope to be out of here by next weekend

I realized I have been miscounting the days I’ve been here – today is day 13 – somehow I’d added an extra day in there. Like all my errors, I can blame it on “chemobrain”. Will have to go back and re-number a couple of the postings.

Here’s a picture of Steve and Jennifer.