June 3rd Update

Time to bore you all to death once again with an update on my health situation. I certainly hope that it doesn't bore you too much. I had an eventful week though. I was admitted to the Cross Cancer Institute on Wednesday for a supposed 3 day stay. Wednesday I required 2 units of blood and some magnesium. That put off starting my chemo until Thursday. This chemo is a mobilizing chemo to get my bone marrow moving to start production of stem cells. Thursday was a looooong day and very tiring too as my transfusions took all night to get done. They gave me 3 drugs, one was 2 hour infusion followed by 4 hours of hydration (this one I had the next 2 days also). Then I had one that lasted 12 hours of infusion. After all that fluid I gained 6 kg. YUCK!!!! Then it was diuretic time to get rid of some of the water weight. When mobility is a problem it is NOT FUN getting to the bathroom on time!!!!!!

I was lucky enough to have a pass on Sunday for 8 hours. Got to spend most of it with Bruce, Jill, Ryan and my sweetheart Sadie. She is such a delight to me. I think she thinks she has a very funny Grandma as she is always laughing at me. Jill had her in to the clinic yesterday for her 2nd shots and the little 'chunky monkey' is nearly 16 lbs. She is in the 90th percentile for her age.

Yesterday I needed to get 2 more units of blood. Even though my haemoglobin count was slightly higher than the day before. Given my history of LOW blood counts, I need to be prepared to have these transfusions. I am hoping to keep them up as best I can though. My Dr. stuck his head in the door yesterday and apologized for ignoring me (I had seen another Dr. all the time I was there). He isn't too worried about me as I came through the chemo easily (no real terrible side effects....Lucky me!!!). He said that my stem cell transplant will be sometime around the end of July. That will give me part of a summer, June and July!

I have started to take my as expensive as Gold drug on Sunday. I have to give myself an injection twice a day for the next 10 days of this hormone (GCSF) to help stimulate the production of stem cells. Since I do not have any extra health insurance until August, I was funded for this VERY EXPENSIVE drug. Thank goodness!!!!

Guess that's about it for today......Hope you're not too BORED, but this the easiest way to update as many people as I can. Stay tuned hopefully one of these days I can discuss something other than my health.