And Then I Got Cancer

I first came to this hospital on August 21st, the day of the eclipse. I thought it was just my luck that I had to get cancer and be admitted to the hospital during the most exciting celestial event visible to the (well protected) naked eye of my adult life. But Mom and Brent and I at least managed to get out to the parking lot for a few minutes to enjoy the goings on. We didn't have eclipse glasses, but a woman offered to share hers with us. Her name was Elizabeth, and she was a psychologist at the hospital. She and Mom got to talking, and told her about her service dog, Waffle, who would do the rounds with patients. I met Waffle later that day. Elizabeth brought her to my room as I was getting settled in. She was a Lab / Golden Retriever mix. She sat at my feet and let me pet her, and reminded me that I wouldn't get to see my own dog for quite a while. They left me with a card that had Waffle's service portrait on the front and a short bio on the back. It reads "Wa...

Seeing as how it's Halloween, I feel obliged to tell you all the scary things that happened in the past 24 hours or so. Yesterday morning, I heard a commotion down the hall, followed by a horde of what seemed to be zombies wandering through the halls. They weren't actually zombies of course. It was a bunch of people with bleach wipes bleaching down the whole unit. Sort of. I don't know what kind of training they got, but they seemed to be bleaching sort of random things. Random sections of walls, the arm rests of one chair but not another. One guy who came through my room did have a lot of trouble walking, so he really did remind me of a zombie. I wonder how he got stuck with this job. Apparently, the nursing staff have been complaining for a while about the poor housekeeping, and a number of people (including me) have gotten c. diff while staying here. I tested positive again a few days ago after having diarrhea every time I sat down over a hole. I'm back on vancomy...

I was wrong about the Filgrastim. I thought, and I think the Medicine team thought, that I was getting Filgrastim to prevent me from becoming too neutropenic. But the intention was really the opposite. The chemo kills cells when they're dividing. Filgrastim makes cells divide faster, increasing the odds that the chemo will work on them. So hopefully more of the leukemia cells will die off. But more of the Sarah cells will also die off. The strategy seems to be working, because my WBC is dropping fast. I came in with a WBC of about 4, which is normal. After one shot of Filgrastim, it jumped up to 19. Yesterday, after four days of chemo, it was down to 1.6. And today I'm at 0.1. I started feeling pretty crappy early on this round. By Wednesday evening I had no appetite. Mom and Dad and David went out to dinner and brought me back some soup and pie. I could tell it was good, but I could only take a few bites. Yesterday I didn't feel like going on my usual morning walk. I ...

It almost feels like I never left. After a week at UC Health, and a glorious ten days at home, I'm back at the VA for take three of chemo. I'm at the point where I feel almost recovered from the last two rounds. I can walk at a fairly normal pace, I can climb stairs without feeling (abnormally) out of breath, and my guts aren't constantly in a twist. I even had a beer with coworkers on Friday. It was really nice to see everyone, and I was pretty much my old self. So it seems a shame to put more poison in my body and fall back into the sick zone. I know in about a week I'll be feeling pretty shitty, so I don't know what kind of Halloween costume I'll be able to pull off. Any suggestions? This round of chemo is called GCLAM: three days of Mitoxantrone, and five days of Cytarabine and Cladribine. I also get shots of Filgrastim to stimulate my bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. Hopefully this will help lessen the blow of the other drugs, my cell count...

I normally ignore calls from numbers I don't recognize. But the other day I got a call from a number with a Seattle area code. I'm glad I picked up, because it was the coordinator from the bone marrow transplant center there. My doctors here had just requested an urgent search for a stem cell donor for me, and the coordinator, Lisa, was calling with information about the donor search. Everyone keeps asking me what the donor search process is like. And every time I get a question from someone, I wish I knew more about it. Like why does it take so long? I mean, if there is a database out there with a bunch of donors, and there's a search algorithm, you should just be able to plug in your information and know instantly if there's a match, right? Well kind of, yeah. Lisa told me she could plug in my HLA information to the system and know right away how many matches I had in the registry. I asked her how long the whole process of finding a donor takes. She said if you h...

When I left the hospital a week ago, I left under the impression that I was in remission. The folks at University hospital didn't see any trace of leukemia in my fourth bone marrow biopsy. And they said that made sense; FLAG-IDA can take a little longer to show its effects. So I went to my parents' house for a few days, got some home cooking, hung out with Pisco, and enjoyed long stretches of sleep and not being connected to an IV pole. On Saturday I went home home, to the house I bought last year. At that point I was ready to enjoy making breakfast for myself and Brent, taking Pisco for walks, and even doing some housework. I could tell I had been languishing in the hospital when vacuuming made me sore. I also have a really hard time opening any kind of bottle or jar. Good thing I have my man hands within shouting distance at all times. I've had a number of appointments back at the VA since I left. I had to finish a round of IV antibiotics, and I went back again today...

Out of the hospital, that is. That's one of the ways being in the hospital is like being in the military. Things are either happening very fast or very slow. There doesn't seem to be anything in between. I had stopped paying attention to my cell counts when I went a couple days without needing a transfusion. Also when I had a longer list of things that annoyed me at University hospital. But every day Dr. Smith, the attending on the bone marrow transplant team, came to see me, he would tell me I looked "too healthy to have leukemia." He was the first to express doubt about my biopsy results that sent me to the University in the first place. So when he came in to tell me the latest results were showing that I was actually in remission, he followed that up with asking if I wanted to go home. Heck yeah I wanted to go home. Not be woken up at 2am? And again at 4am? Not have to call someone to ask for a gown so I can cover myself before going for a walk? Not be constan...