Friday

I get to go home today for the weekend after my afternoon treatment. As of right now I don’t need to be hooked up to fluids for the weekend. I just have to make sure I drink plenty of liquids. I have to be at Group Health at 8:00 am Monday morning for the stem cell transplant. I’ll be there for about 8 hours hooked up to IV fluids. The actual transplant will only take about 10-30 minutes depending on how many bags they separated my stem cell into & will take place somewhere around 11:00 am to noon. Monday my immune system will be completely gone. It’s on it’s way down now. Depending on how I feel I might not have to go to the hospital Tuesday. We’ll just take each day at a time.

Update - (written Thursday)

Yesterday afternoon’s chemo treatment I had some unexpected pain involved. The nurse was giving me an anti-nausea drug before I started & about half way through it I jumped out of the chair yelling in pain. It’s kind of hard to explain what happened cuz I’ve never felt anything like this before. It kind of felt like I had been shocked or this burst of extremely powerful energy went through me-very painful to say the least. Apparently I’m only supposed to have this anti-nausea drug in the morning. It lasts the whole day, so I don’t need it in the afternoon too.

Other than that little episode I’ve still been feeling good. My doctor seems surprised every time he asks me how I’m doing & I feel fine. He thinks part of it might be because I didn’t have radiation to break me down even more & I’m healthy otherwise. Hopefully I won’t be as sick through this whole thing as I was dreading. Depending on how I feel tomorrow night when I get done I might be able to go home for the weekend. Also depending on how I feel I might need to be hooked up to fluids for 4 hours on Saturday. Group Health is closed, so I would either have a nurse come in & do it or learn how to do it myself. I need to get ready to head out for my afternoon treatment again. Bye.

Here's a picture of Mt. Rainer from the room I was sitting in for chemo. this morning:

Seattle Chemo Treatment Day One (Michelle)

My first day of chemo went fine. It took longer than I expected because they had me hooked up to IV fluid before, during & after. We were done about 11:30 am. I noticed a metal taste in my mouth later in the day & feeling a little funny, but not bad at all for the first day. They gave me something to help me sleep at night because one of the drugs they gave me today keeps you awake. I’m used to that though. I haven’t been able to sleep for the last few weeks. One of the side affects to what I’m going through is night sweats. I mostly just feel it on my head, which you think would be cold with it being bald.

Update - Michelle (Sunday)

I’m heading for Seattle tonight to get settled in at the Northgate apartment again. I have chemo. in the mornings at 7:00 am for 2-4 hours & in the afternoons at 4:30 pm for 1-2 hours. I might be home this weekend, but that depends on how I feel Friday night after my week of chemo. If you want to come down & visit me while I’m in Seattle please call or e-mail first. I may not feel up to it or I might not be allowed visitors at certain times. Hopefully I’ll be back in about a month!

Michelle

I met with Dr. Raish Thursday & I will not be doing the 3rd session of ICE chemo. Group Health Cooperative (GHC) wants me in Seattle for the 5 days of hard core chemo. & the transplant in 2 weeks. The chemo. will be from Monday, June 25-Friday, June 29 at GHC, which is in the Capitol Hill area. I will go in every morning about 7:00 am for 3-4 hours & every afternoon about 4:30 pm for a shorter treatment.

The transplant will be Monday, July 2 and they will be admitting me to Virginia Mason Hospital on Tuesday, July 3. I will be in Seattle at least one month minimum after the transplant depending on how things go. I don’t have to do the neupogon shots to produce the white blood cells anymore. Two less shots per day is good with me. =) I meet with Dr. Feldmen, the oncologist at Group Health Cooperative, Friday, June 22 to go over everything. I’m sure not ready for this. I didn’t think it would be so soon.

Monday Update - Michelle

I’m home!!! After my appointment this morning we went back to the apartment to clean & pack & got back this afternoon. Thursday afternoon I meet with my oncologist to find out if I’m allowed to work at all. That is also when I’ll find out what the next step is-if I’m going to do the 3rd session of ICE chemo. or skip it & head down to Seattle for the 5 days of chemo. & do the transplant. Ug.

I feel pretty good for the most part-as long as I move slow. I get winded easily. I haven’t felt nauseous in while. Thank goodness. Even though I felt pretty comfortable at the apartment in Northgate it’s nice to be home.

Sunday Update - Michelle

This past week has been full of appointments. I had an EKG done, an x-ray on my chest, a physical, tested my Hickman catheter for the harvesting, signed consent papers & had my blood drawn everyday checking my blood counts & platelets. Normal healthy people have a white blood cell count of 5,000-10,000. This week my white blood cell count went down to about 2,000. If it had hit zero I would have had to go on antibiotics to keep from getting infections.

Tuesday night I ended up in bed for the evening with a horrible headache. This is a side affect from the neupogen shot that makes the white blood cells. I was given a prescription that did a pretty good job with the pain the rest of the week. I had my stem cells harvested this morning from 8:30-11:00 am. Their goal was to collect 5 million & they ended up with 4.89 million, which was good enough for me to not have to go back for a second day of harvesting. Whew. If my red cell count & platelets were too low I would have had to have transfusions during the harvesting, but everything went fine. I go in tomorrow morning to have my blood drawn again & get discharged. They need to check my blood the next few days to make sure everything is going back to normal. I’m going to find out if they’ll let me do the rest of the blood draws in Mt. Vernon, so we can go home tomorrow.

The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) had a great bunch of people to work with. That place is absolutely wonderful. Everything is so easy to figure out there & runs so smoothly. The apartment we stayed at in Northgate also worked out great for us. Most of the time it took us about 15 minutes to get to the SCCA. My next step is to get a hold of Group Health to find out what’s going to happen next.

Sunday Update - Melba

Michelle had her blood draw this morning and the white count had gone up to 8.2 from the 2.16 of yesterday. That was good news! As a result they did another blood draw after we got done meeting with the nurse for her vitals. This was to do another kind of a check - don't ask me what - it was Greek to us. Anyway, before we left we had a visit from Jenny Giles who goes to a Covenant church on Capitol Hill - her husband had a chronic leukemia back in 1999 and while they lived here (from Arkansas) the van taking them from the Pete Gross House where they stayed - to the grocery store, went by the Covenant church and they ended up at that church. Anyway, when Tricia's boss contacted the church pastor, Jenny stepped forward to contact me - thought she might know of a place near Virginia Mason for us to stay - she didn't but had other tips for us. She knit a beautiful shawl for Michelle and delivered it last Tuesday to the Cancer Center and then drove over from her place on Magnolia to visit us.

In the afternoon Michelle got a call from SCCA to say that with the 8.2 white count and whatever they found in the extra blood draw told them it is time for the apheresis tomorrow morning. We have to be there at 8:30 for blood draw and then harvesting. The gal told Michelle it will be 3 hours, but we will have to stick around for further report later in the day to get the 'for sure' you're done report. So we could be home by tomorrow night! She has had headache today although not really horrific - she takes the prescription stuff right away to keep it at bay.