Will Wonders Never Cease

Due to the charming bacteria detected in my blood, I am now required to administer to myself an antibiotic twice daily through my line (a.k.a The Tubies). Now how, you might ask, does one administer medications through a central line without the aid of an IV pump and a trained nurse?

The Intermate Infusion System. Or the stunted baby bottle to your left.

It's pretty cool actually. When there's medicine in the bottle, the stem inside swells out. I hook it to one of my ports, unclamp the line connected to the bottle, and slowly the medicine is dispensed through some sort of gradual pressure release. It takes about an hour to get my full dose. And highly portable; tonight, I popped my bottle into my purse and went to Target.

Will wonders never cease.

I've been home since Saturday evening. My blood counts are climbing, and I am no longer neutropenic. Yee haw. Yesterday, Little A and I spent the morning and lunchtime frolicking at Cheswick Park where they have the best playground for the small ones and a great creek for rock throwing.

And my hair is falling out again. I figured it would happen sooner or later. My oncologist was actually surprised, considering the amount of chemo I've been through, that it grew back at all and with such speed. But if this last round hadn't knocked out my follicles, then the nuclear devastation reigned down on me before my bone marrow transplant would have most definitely turned me bald again. So here I go leaving little hairs everywhere. Not to mention my scalp itches like a somethinorother.

Today was a day-long meeting with the bone marrow folks full of consultations and more tests.
I've decided that a bone marrow transplant is akin to being killed and then having to raise oneself from the dead. Like a form of vampirism. My excitement will likely begin in the first few days of October when I'll start by getting another port (The bone marrow folks love their access points), and then a few days later, I'll begin my first of six full body radiation treatments. I keep asking people if all this radiation and chemo will endow me special abilities, but everyone keeps skirting the issue by grinning and chuckling. It's highly likely that they think I am joking.

One of the things a nurse told me today has been gnawing at me, not to mention the rather corpse like appearance of several other patients in the clinic. The nurse told me there are three conditions under which I will be released from the hospital post BMT: 1.) My white blood cells need to be at level of at least 1.0 which to give you perspective my current count after the last round of chemo is 1.7 and climbing. 2.) I'll need to be eating at least 1,000 calories a day (BMT patients not only lose their sense of taste but experience GI issues making eating unpleasant). 3.) I am mobile, up and walking around.

Okay, if those are the conditions of my release, God help me but what am I going to be like the three or four weeks after my transplant. A corpse, that's what. And I've got to raise myself up from the throes of death. Whooooooo. Just in time for Halloween.

This is going to be AWESOME.