Day -3: Early Start

It's 5:30 am. I've been up for nearly two hours. I've walked two miles, looping the hallway on the 11th floor, north tower, of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 26 laps to a mile. Nonetheless, I got the through the first mile in 16 minutes, did the exercise bike's mile in 3:30, then finished out the last mile, with a couple stops for water and a throat lozenge, in 23 minutes as a cooldown.

The nurses say I looked tan (from the x-ray radiation), and the shirt makes it look like I'm on a Carribean vacation.

So now it's time to blog, though it's the Through the Bible in a Year blog posts I need to get to. I have a friend coming for most of the day, so I won't be able to work on it later today, and I'm only one day into next week. I really want to be ahead. My left thumb already shakes when I hold things, and I've only had one day of chemo and no Cytoxan yet. Who knows how much I'll be able to blog next week.

Cytoxan and the Lasix Experience

The Cytoxan must be a doozie. The one thing they've worried about is making sure it doesn't pool in the bladder and cause uninary tract bleeding. Apparently, that bleeding can be pretty bad, and the chemo will be rapidly taking away my ability to clot.

The remedy? Put 225 ml/hour of fluid, or about a quart every 4 hours, directly into my blood stream before they give it to me. Make sure they have me running to the bathroom regularly, then give me the Cytoxan, and then give me Lasix afterward. If my kidneys don't take care of flushing all that fluid out of my bloodstream quickly, the Lasix will force them to.

(You can read about my July experience with Lasix if you want, but beware of TMI!)

A friend told me that Lasix is a lifesaver for her, preventing terrible fluid buildup in her body. The nurse explained that it can be really important for heart patients, too. For me, it's a real unpleasant experience.

On the other hand, urinating blood isn't a very pleasant experience, either. I think I'll just happily endure the "Lasix experience."

On TMI

A very dear friend wrote me and suggested that one of my previous posts was almost TMI (Too Much Information).

For those of you that find it to be TMI, just remember that this blog gets found by searches for "blastic plasmayctoid dendritic cell neoplasm," "bpdcn," "leukemia treatment," "bone marrow transplant," and similar search terms several times a day. A number of people who read this blog regularly are going through the very same thing I'm going through or worse.

I really expect that some of what I write on here is TMI for friends and relatives, except where they're just enjoying laughing at me (which I'm happy for), but I'm also pretty sure it's not TMI for any fellow patients, who have thought and felt all those things.

An extended hospital stay will do a number on your sense of modesty.

And that may be good. Any lady that's been through childbirth knows that there's some modesty you're just going to have to give up. Even if you manage to have a birth with only females present, you're still in for an rather messy experience, significant nudity, and a belly that instantly becomes a flattened basketball.

In return you get your greatest joy and biggest problem, both at the same time.

It's all designed by God.

Okay, off to the other blog. Good day to all of you!