Day + 6

Wow, 6 days since the introduction of my new bone marrow and stem cells…amazing. Hi everyone, warm greetings from sunny San Diego. Not that I can enjoy any of it aside from looking through a window. With that said, I hope there are a bunch of you out on the sand somewhere. OK, enough of that, I’m starting to depress myself.

So today is officially Day + 6 and all is on track. The doctors meet with Evey and me every morning to discuss how things are going and everything so far has been positive. The nurses provide feedback regularly as well and they are saying things are going great. I do have somewhat of a sore throat, which they say is a side effect of the radiation treatment. I guess it can really break down the lining inside of the mouth, so irritations like sore throats become more prevalent…but not serious.

On a worse note, my luck ran south today. Part of the post transplant treatment is the need for a drug called FK 506. This drug is critical when it comes to fighting any sort of rejection from the new cells, so not only is it important to make sure I am getting the drug, it’s just as important to make sure I have the right levels of the drug in my system. One other thing different about FK 506 is that it sticks to the walls of the IV tubing, so in order to get a clean reading of how much of it is in my system, they need to draw blood from a tube has not had any FK 506 run through it, or they run the risk of having a false result. A false result meaning the tests show a high amount of FK 506 because they pulled some residue off the tube walls. So what they do is keep one of my two lines clean of FK 506 and dedicate the other line to the administration of the drug. That way, when it’s time to check the FK 506 levels in my system, they have a clean line to pull from.

Well, someone messed up yesterday and administered the drug through the clean line. This means that any future tests on how much or how little FK 506 I have in my system would have to be done on the other arm, blood drawn with a needle…twice a day. The alternative was to have them go in, pull out the contaminated line and replace it with a new one. I went with that and was actually pretty cool. They had the whole thing on a monitor so I got to see the procedure first hand. It’s all good now and my PIC line is back and working. I think I’m going to hang a sign or something this time just to make absolutely sure this doesn’t happen again. I don’t think that will be necessary though, because when news spread about what happened, there were a bunch of pissed off doctors and nurses. I think it goes without saying that the nurse who did this will not be doing it again for quite a while. In all honesty, what happened today is miniscule in comparison to the big picture so we’re already over it and I hope she is too.

That’s my news for today guys. It’s still a roller coaster for me when it comes to nausea, mouth issues and fatigue but those are pretty easy to fight through when you can see the finish line ahead. Thanks again for reading my rambling messages. Just knowing you guys are out there means more to me than you know. Take care, be well and we'll catch up soon.