Day 64, Monday, April 1st, 2013

I feel like I should apologize for the distinct lack of consistent updates, these last three weeks. I have been on a lot of morphine, and motivation and focus are not paramount amongst its many and varied effects. Primarily, morphine blunts pain, makes you sleepy, and bungs you up; opiates in general share these characteristics. They make you fall asleep when you try to read or write, though the dreams that you have are intensely cinematic, and often a good source of story material.

I think I've well established the why of the morphine: my rectum was unhappy. I don't believe more time needs to be spent on the specifics concerning the state of my bottom. As to the how, "they" had given me a PCA, which is a Patient Controlled Analgesia pump. Morphine on demand, which I absolutely promise to have only abused a teeny-tiny bit (this is backed up by my daily usage numbers, which show a dramatic decline in morphine use as my bottom regained its dignity and composure). Speaking of dignity and composure, I have had so many people in lab coats and lanyards gander and ponder at my downstairs in the last ten days that I do believe the action has lost all meaning, and I am concerned that I have acquired an easily prompted and socially unacceptable habit.

I've had several biopsies by the lovely folks in the dermatology department, until one of my Docs, a lovely little lady named Rupi, told them to go cram it for a while. Her words to me were something along the lines of, "Who takes biopsies from a neutropenic patient?!" This, of course, implies faulty reasoning on the part of the dermatologists, but the upshot of all of that is that they did get a pretty solid look at my skin, and there appears to be no active mycosis fungoides. So, while I do have an interesting assortment of skin blotches at the moment, they can be said to have derived, most likely, from the total body irradiation, and not in any way from lymphoma. This is really, really good news, and puts me in the best possible position to benefit maximally from the second transplant, with a minimum of side effects.

My cell counts have begun a meteoric rise back to normalcy, completely on schedule for a transplant in which everything goes perfectly. I have had almost no mucositis, very little difficulty eating, and I even got to keep my eyebrows. I am a huge fan of having eyebrows, as it turns out. The only real downsides have been the aforementioned colonic calamities and the lack of exercise engendered by that. I've spent the last two weeks, not exactly bedridden, but certainly in my bed for everything except showers and trips to the head; I was supposed to exercise daily, and that was not possible.

Now for the best part: assuming that all of the doctors that need to see me today get to do so, I shall be getting out later this afternoon. This is not an April Fools' Day prank. I don't really believe in those anymore, not after living in student residence while going to university. Things got out of hand. 

To reiterate: I'm getting out.

I get ten whole days to spend with my girlfriend, in Seattle, and I'm in amazing shape, all things considered. I'm pretty happy.

What's red and smells like blue paint? Red paint.

update: I got out.