Another day.....

It is a sunny Tuesday as mom sits and reads her 206th (at least) magazine. We had a nice selection in our care packages and she has been hitting up the volunteer cart stock as well. Yesterday was definitely a "blechy" day and the hours just crept by. But today I am feeling pretty good and it is always nice to start a new day knowing it is going to be different than the day before. 

After pulling hair out steadily since last week, I was so looking forward to the Massey salon lady coming up to shave my head today.  But we found out she called in sick and won't be back until Thursday - aargh!!  Two more days of hair EVERYWHERE!!! Yuk!

The induction chemo was successful in getting those Leukemia blasts out of my bone marrow, now it is just a waiting game until my own cells start growing again and blood counts return to normal.  I am still considered "progressive care" which basically means I am a needy patient and my nurse should have a lower patient count.   My days have a fairly regular pattern.  They draw blood overnight and see what all I need.  Then we spend most of the morning doing repletions of whatever is low - platelets, red blood cells, and potassium are the big ones.  I take pills and they give me IV meds to prevent infections.  If I spike a fever there is another whole routine that goes with that. Lately they have struggled to keep my electrolytes up, so I get labs done again in the afternoon and another round of repletions are done in the evening based on those results. 

My platelets have been below 5 for a few days now.  They give me transfusions, but I am "refractory" to them and my counts don't go up.  Every now and then I might hit a batch of platelets that my system likes,  but I haven't had one of those in a while.

My stomach is still a mess.  I am eating some.  It is definitely hit and miss on what works.  When I watch TV and see the commercials, I have a hard time imagining that my stomach will ever be able to handle something like pizza again.  But I know it will heal as well.  It just can't get better until my immune system is back up and running.

Yesterday my nurse who I have had for three days straight taped up some things on my bathroom mirror before she left.  One was of Dori and it says "when life get hard you know what to do.....Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...."  That is some good advice!