TOAST!!

I ATE TOAST!!

Having not eaten solid food in like, 5 days, it was pretty exciting, let me tell you. My mucositis is much better - it's not all the way gone, and when I swallow pills and stuff I can feel everything go down, but it's good enough so that I can eat some basic foods.

Besides that, the last few days have been kinda crappy. I've been getting these fevers - they don't consider it a fever here unless your temperature is 100.4 or higher - they come on randomly, break randomly, then come on again. On Monday I was feverish and weak and achy all day - I just felt so gross, and I could barely walk or stand up I was so tired and weak. And when you get a fever here, it's like, all hell breaks loose - they do blood cultures, urinalysis, and a CT scan! They're called "neutropenic fevers" because, well, I'm neutropenic (I do have some neutrophils, just not 1,500), and the doctors are only able to figure out the cause for about 20% of these fevers. I don't think they've pinpointed the reason for any of the fevers I've had - my blood cultures have always come back negative, I don't have any infections that they're aware of, and my CT scans are always clear. So they're just fevers. Apparently people get these fevers when their white counts are increasing, or if their cells are engrafting (which is good), but I don't think they have any way of knowing if this is the case for me. As far as the mucositis, at one point (I think it was last week but I honestly don't remember) it was so bad they were talking about a PCA (those little patient controlled morphine drips), and I was only keeping down Gatorade and chicken broth. It was horrible - I felt like someone was standing on my chest all day, and my stomach was killing me. That's over with for the most part - I still have some ambient pain in my chest or stomach from time to time, and I have to be really careful about what I eat/drink (no acid, no citrus, nothing spicy, nothing sharp or crunchy), but I don't need pain medication anymore. As of right now I'm feeling okay, just really weak and kinda tired - I went days with drinking/eating nothing more than Gatorade and chicken broth and the only exercise I had was 2 or 3 laps around the unit before I'd get tired and dizzy and have to lay down again, and I lost a lot of weight really quickly. So now that I can eat, I have to slowly build myself back up and get strong again and try to exercise more.

My doctor came in this morning and told me my liver looked good - they were watching 2 sets of numbers regarding my liver, and both have gone down, and they think things will be back to normal there soon. My counts have been slowly coming up - today I have 540 white blood cells and 173 neutrophils. My counts actually started coming up a few days ago - around day 17, I think - but it was so early that I didn't want to say anything. But we've seen a steady increase, so it looks like they're doing what they're supposed to do, which is really good! And really early!

Dr. Jones just came in - he's the new attending (well he's not new, he's the head of the BMT program, he's just the next attending on the rotating schedule), and he had good news for me - I get to leave in a few days! Dr. Meade had been very vague about this yesterday - he said "If your counts continue to increase you won't be here much longer," and when I said, "Like, how much longer?" he said, "I don't know." Which is the fair thing to say, because if he were to get my hopes up and then dash them I'd be completely devastated. But Dr. Jones actually said a few days and possibly by the end of the week, so I'm really happy. I hope the next few days go well so that this actually happens! I'll be moving to family housing again, and going to IPOP every day - they estimate a minimum of one month of IPOP after I'm discharged from the hospital.

I feel like the first scary part of the BMT is almost over - and now I'm getting ready for the next scary part. It's going to be scary dealing with and monitoring GVH, assuming I get it, and making sure I don't get any infections or fevers while I'm in IPOP.

Here are 2 pictures - the first is of me high as a kite on Benadryl - that's why I'm not smiling - but you can see how dark my skin has gotten! A nice Hopkins glow, if you will. The Busulfan darkens your skin so much - I'm not sure how long it will take to fade.

And here's one of my bald a$$ head:

So I just got good news (I've been writing this post since this morning and it's 3pm now) - really good news - the results of my flow cytometry test came back and:

there's no leukemia in my blood

This is obviously really good news, and it means that so far, things are working. They don't do a bone marrow biopsy until day 60, so they don't know what's going on in my marrow (which freaks me out), but not seeing any leukemia in my blood is definitely really, really good. Especially since I have such an aggressive leukemia - people with aggressive leukemias don't always get such good results, so I'm really happy and relieved and hoping that the next test they do has an equally positive outcome!

I'll end there - on a happy note. :)