Day 103, May 9th, 2013
As you can see, I've skipped another couple of days. This is largely because later on Day 100, I got heavily irradiated, and I felt like a lit bag of dog leavings; the unwilling, inanimate, party to a game of ding-dong-ditch. Radiation makes you feel shitty - this is the message here. On Day 101, medically referred to as Day Zero, I was driven (Mom refused to let me walk) to the SCCA for transplant numero dos, El Allo Minute, as referred to by no one, ever.
Day Hunnert'n One was pretty easy on me. I woke up still feeling "not so fresh", of course a remnant from the aforementioned dog-doo-beams, but the transplant, from my perspective, consisted of getting two tylenol, a smaller syringe of Benadryl than last time (so I was drunk enough to slur, but not drunk enough that the room had somehow been adapted into a large-scale centrifuge), and getting a bag of blood through my Hickman line. I chewed gum, cracked jokes with my Red Team nurse and PA, and they stuck around for much, much longer than was medically necessary to establish that I was alright, so I must have been entertaining. Total elapsed time: two and a half hours, including the drive there and back, at the end of which I actually felt better than I had going in.
The bag of blood was not specifically blood, per se, it was, in fact, the fluid isolated from Dad's bone marrow. [Note: because of his sparkly Shriner hat and titles, Kelly has taken to calling Dad, 'Shiny John'. Ash is especially fond of this, and in conversations between us, we generally refer to him as Shiny. This is only relevant because she told me that I was getting "Shiny's Sparkles" instead of his stem cells.]
Shiny was up ridiculously early. In fact, everyone was up ridiculously early, except for me, in order to take his Shininess over to the University of Washington Medical Center, so that they could ask him his opinion on whether or not a rag smelled like chloroform, and then, while he was out, rifle through the upper-rear of his pelvis with some sterilized medical rifling tools for a while.
I'm told that the procedure went exceedingly well, and they were able to harvest the required amount of marrow with the minimum amount of punches/incisions and otherwise personally undesirable, but necessary actions. Kelly had stayed at UWMC for the duration, and was in charge of make sure Shiny made it home at least as intact as the doctors had left him, of which she did an admirable job. He was home, lying in bed, watching TV, and was chatty as f*ck, which apparently had something to do with the dose of Oxycodone he was on. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
We all hung out for a while, and then I went back to our room and attempted to nap off the Benadryl. Kelly was left in charge of Dad's care, Mom was in charge of mine, and we were in separate (but handily adjacent) rooms (Kelly definitely got the worst of that bargain, Shiny needed a lot more attention than I did). The rest of the evening passed mostly without incident.
Day 102, however, did not. I had nothing scheduled, as it was one of my rest days before my impending-but-final round of chemo (tomorrow), and in fact, nothing happened to me at all. It was Dad. He'd been feeling quite low energy, and had a corresponding lowered red blood cell count when he went in for blood draw that afternoon. In response to his cell counts, his team had decided to schedule him for a blood transfusion during his scheduled visit the next day; but after he got back from his check-in at the SCCA, he spiked a fever, and Mom rushed him off to the UWMC again, as per instructions. They ran a bunch of tests, filled him with fluids and antibiotics, and kept him overnight. As of this writing, he's still there, but doing much better. Mom stayed the night with him, and is still there, keeping his Royal Shininess company. His temperature is normal, and he's waiting on that blood transfusion. [As a precaution, prior to bone marrow harvest, they have you store some of your own blood for just such an emergency, so he's not even getting a stranger's blood: he's getting his own Sparkles back.]
Kelly and I stayed home and watched Bad Boys II. It is indeed an adrenaline-packed thrill-ride.
Why do elves go to school? To learn the elf-abet.
Day Hunnert'n One was pretty easy on me. I woke up still feeling "not so fresh", of course a remnant from the aforementioned dog-doo-beams, but the transplant, from my perspective, consisted of getting two tylenol, a smaller syringe of Benadryl than last time (so I was drunk enough to slur, but not drunk enough that the room had somehow been adapted into a large-scale centrifuge), and getting a bag of blood through my Hickman line. I chewed gum, cracked jokes with my Red Team nurse and PA, and they stuck around for much, much longer than was medically necessary to establish that I was alright, so I must have been entertaining. Total elapsed time: two and a half hours, including the drive there and back, at the end of which I actually felt better than I had going in.
The bag of blood was not specifically blood, per se, it was, in fact, the fluid isolated from Dad's bone marrow. [Note: because of his sparkly Shriner hat and titles, Kelly has taken to calling Dad, 'Shiny John'. Ash is especially fond of this, and in conversations between us, we generally refer to him as Shiny. This is only relevant because she told me that I was getting "Shiny's Sparkles" instead of his stem cells.]
Shiny was up ridiculously early. In fact, everyone was up ridiculously early, except for me, in order to take his Shininess over to the University of Washington Medical Center, so that they could ask him his opinion on whether or not a rag smelled like chloroform, and then, while he was out, rifle through the upper-rear of his pelvis with some sterilized medical rifling tools for a while.
I'm told that the procedure went exceedingly well, and they were able to harvest the required amount of marrow with the minimum amount of punches/incisions and otherwise personally undesirable, but necessary actions. Kelly had stayed at UWMC for the duration, and was in charge of make sure Shiny made it home at least as intact as the doctors had left him, of which she did an admirable job. He was home, lying in bed, watching TV, and was chatty as f*ck, which apparently had something to do with the dose of Oxycodone he was on. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
We all hung out for a while, and then I went back to our room and attempted to nap off the Benadryl. Kelly was left in charge of Dad's care, Mom was in charge of mine, and we were in separate (but handily adjacent) rooms (Kelly definitely got the worst of that bargain, Shiny needed a lot more attention than I did). The rest of the evening passed mostly without incident.
Day 102, however, did not. I had nothing scheduled, as it was one of my rest days before my impending-but-final round of chemo (tomorrow), and in fact, nothing happened to me at all. It was Dad. He'd been feeling quite low energy, and had a corresponding lowered red blood cell count when he went in for blood draw that afternoon. In response to his cell counts, his team had decided to schedule him for a blood transfusion during his scheduled visit the next day; but after he got back from his check-in at the SCCA, he spiked a fever, and Mom rushed him off to the UWMC again, as per instructions. They ran a bunch of tests, filled him with fluids and antibiotics, and kept him overnight. As of this writing, he's still there, but doing much better. Mom stayed the night with him, and is still there, keeping his Royal Shininess company. His temperature is normal, and he's waiting on that blood transfusion. [As a precaution, prior to bone marrow harvest, they have you store some of your own blood for just such an emergency, so he's not even getting a stranger's blood: he's getting his own Sparkles back.]
Kelly and I stayed home and watched Bad Boys II. It is indeed an adrenaline-packed thrill-ride.
Why do elves go to school? To learn the elf-abet.
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