Graduation Day

Care givers worrying about what will happen tomorrrow (on the 8th of September, which turned out to be Graduation Day in the minds of the staff at the Huntsman Center. Several of us got our stem cells back yesterday and the nurses from the Infusion wards along with some patient coordinators paraded around the halls passing out Birthday Balloons (it is a re-birth in a sense to start over with a new immune system).

Yesterday was a long day for me because it started with a 2-hour infusion of vicomycin to combat some bugs that were captured with my stem cells during the aphersis in the U of U hospital last month. There are to be 5 more of these infusions, which I will administer to myself over the next 2 and half days. Dr. Zangari came in my room and asked about the vicomycin and why I was getting it (he works with Dr. Tricot, but this was the first time he had seen me); when I told him about the bugs in the stem cell bags he said that they frequently get some kind of contamination and that the vicomycin will take care of it. The restoration of the stem cells followed and required about 12 and a half minutes per bag (they used a total of 6 bags out of the 18 that they had collected, and I don't know what they plan to do with the remainders unless they expect relapses). Then came a 2-hour saline flush of my system and we did not leave the hospital until about 2:30. The only bad effect I feel thus far is a general fatigue where I feel like I should be sleeping but sleep does not come and I lie awake most of the night.

Today is a day off and I am at the house while Emma socializes with her aquasize buddies. This gives me an opportunity to work on the blog without my cursed laptop computer plaguing me. But tomorrow promises to be another long day. I was told several days ago that I might need a blood transfusion and yesterday they confirmed that I do indeed need one and that it will take 4 hours tomorrow, which probably means another 6-hour visit with all of the other things they do while preparing for an activity.