Ok...I realized it had been a while, so I thought I'd give everyone an update on what's been going on with the cancer shit. If you've been following your schedules, I should have been lounging at home all week giving myself shots of neupogen to boost my body to produce white cells so that we can collect stem cells for the transplant. However, on Sunday, April 29th, my body had a different idea...
I was at my mom's house, she's my primary caregiver through all of this since I can't drive, doing everything as I had been, when I started getting really cold. So we grabbed the thermometer, and sure enough, I had a temp! But we just kept an eye on it, and the clinic said we should come in if it got to 100.5 or higher.
Well, Monday morning it hadn't gone down, and it actually got up to 100.6. So we called the clinic and they told us to head in. We got there probably around 9:00am. I was shaking pretty bad from the fever, and it hadn't gone down any. So they put me on fluids, and gave me IV Lasix, which I soon learned is liquid devil. It's a diuretic, so makes you have to pee a gallon every 10 minutes. Anyway, things were not getting any better, and so around 2pm I was admitted to the bone marrow unit at Northside Hospital. They gave me more Lasix, and there was much rejoicing...yay. So, they said I obviously had some kind of infection, and with my blood counts being as low as they were, they had to find out fast what it was and stop it, or I could very well die. More good news for me. Blood cultures were done, urine samples were taken, I also had to get tested for VRE, (which I still don't know what VRE is) which involved swabbing my booty hole with a Q-tip...I love hospitals. Anyway, they were giving me lots of fluids and Tylenol trying to get my fever to go down...it didn't.
The next day the doctor told me that they were narrowing down what the infection was, but the blood cultures would take a few days. But from the urine sample, they were fairly certain that the infection started in my urinary tract. But they had no idea how far it had spread, and seeing how the body hates foreign bodies, they would have to take out my port and brand new catheter that I mentioned in the last update. I was scheduled for surgery the next day to have them both taken out. As we were getting ready to head down for the surgery, my fever started getting worse and worse. I was shaking so bad from it, that they had to give me a shot of Demerol to stop me from shaking. The IV nurse was in there trying to put in the IV since I would no longer have the central catheter, but she was having trouble because of how bad I was shaking. My fever was so bad that the Demerol only lasted about 5 minutes before the uncontrollable shaking started again. They ended up giving me 3 shots of Demerol, which is a bit too much, as I started to throw up, (most of which I had to be told later because I had absolutely no recollection). Our nurse did not want to tell us at the time, but my temperature at the time was 106.8!!! I didn't even know it could get that high! So I was taken down to surgery. As you could imagine, with a temp of 106.8, I was sweating buckets, so that was making it hard for them to prep me for surgery. Since my nurses knew I was going in for surgery, I couldn't eat or drink anything prior to surgery. Now, hours later and god knows how much I had sweated out, I was dying of thirst!! So they got me prepped, and had to wait until my blood pressure stabilized before they could do the surgery. I laid there for what seemed like hours. The nurse started giving me the medication for what they call twilight sleep. This is usually uneventful, and you drift off into sleep. This time I started feeling weird. My eyes started going back and forth uncontrollably, like in REM sleep. My legs started twitching, and I just had this really strange feeling. I kept saying I felt weird, but nobody answered me and I don't think there was even anyone in there. I could hear someone whispering, but no one was talking to me. I started thinking, "this is it...there's nothing they can do. The infection has gotten too bad, they can't control my fever, and I'm going to die right here". I have never felt so helpless in my life. But after about 20 more minutes of this, they came back in and said they were ready to begin. The surgery went fine, and I was taken to another room for an ultrasound of my urinary tract to try to find out why the infection had started. Then I was taken back up to the room.
The next day we found out what the infection was precisely...E. Coli!! That's right folks, I had E. Coli. Still don't know how or why...but that's what it was. Also on Wednesday, I had to start the neupogen shots that I was supposed to be doing at home...but I'd be doing them in the hospital. The next few days were not quite as eventful, but I was still dealing with the fevers and the chills and horrible headaches. After a few days of the neupogen shots, I started to experience what I had been told I more than likely would...bone pain. The purpose of neupogen is to spur the bones to release the stem cells so that we could collect them. So it's not uncommon for your bones to hurt while this happens. The ones that hurt the most were my back, hips and knees...and my head...oh god my head.
So the ultrasound and subsequent CT scan of my urinary tract confirmed what we had thought. I have a kidney stone in my right kidney. It was one that would be too big to pass, so they'd have to lithotripsy it, or blast it into pieces with radio waves. When it rains it pours. We still haven't done that, however, because my counts haven't been high enough for it.
The chemo had done it's job...it had knocked my blood counts into the basement. The neupogen was there to boost them back up again. The count they were monitoring was my neutrophils, which are really tiny white cells, and are most important for killing infection. So the neutrophil level had to be at .500 before they could let me go home. Well, on Sunday, it was still at .000. It didn't look like I was going home anytime soon. Then on Monday, a week after I was admitted, it was .200...definitely an improvement, but still not going home. Tuesday, when they brought the lab results in, my neutrophils were 2.200...much higher than the necessary .500!! I was gonna get to go home. But before I could go, they had to put the catheter back in, because there would be no way to collect the stem cells without it. Around 2pm, I went down to surgery and had that puppy put back in. Then I got to my grandparents house around 6pm on Tuesday, May 8th...I was free!! My grandparents live in Smyrna, which is about half as far from the clinic that my mom's house in Morrow.
We had to go into the clinic at 8am on Wednesday, just for lab work. We needed to see what the overall white count was, because stem cell collection could not begin until they reached a certain point. Well, it had reached that point, and we started collection!! The machine is the same one used to collect platelets. It pulls blood out of my catheter, spins the stem cells out, and then returns the blood to me. The goal is 2-5 million stem cells. This usually takes a few collections, so we were planning on doing this several days in a row. It took about three hours to do the collection, so I just sat there reading harry potter, (I've been re-reading 1-6 so that I can be ready for when the last one comes out in July...I'm a dork I know!). After that was done, they wanted to change the dressing on my catheter and I would get to go home. As they were changing the dressing they decided to use some adhesive remover to remove some of the tape residue on my chest from all the procedures from the past week. Since my incision from the surgery was exposed, the two nurses and I were all wearing surgical masks to stop it from getting infected. Well, as they were cleaning up the tape residue, my lungs became irritated and I started coughing and my heart started beating fast and irregularly. They immediately put me on oxygen and took me back to the room with the hospital bed I had been in for collection. They pushed some more lasix, (yippee), through my IV and hooked up the EKG, blood pressure cuff and pulse ox monitor, (which monitors the oxygen level in your blood). My pulse ox was down to 85%, which it's supposed to be as close to 100% as you can get, and mine is normally around 99%. At this point, every nurse, technician and doctor in the clinic was either in there working on me or standing out in the hall watching anxiously. It was to the point I'd have to kick out 10 or so people every 10 minutes so I could pee...damn lasix!! My nurse told me, "ya know Lucas...if you wanted a clinic headcount, all you had to do was ask and I'd give it to ya!!". So, it was off to the hospital again yesterday to figure this one out!! More blood cultures were done, another urinalysis, and VRE test...yippee. But, shortly after we got in the hospital, we did get some good news. After only one collection, they got 7.23 million stem cells....well over the 2-5 million goal!! After overnight observation, no more reactions, and negative blood tests, I was released this morning. They never figured it out definitively, but our guess is I reacted to something in the adhesive remover. The ingredients of the adhesive remover: mineral oil, fragrance, and lanolin. Who knows what the hell in that list I reacted to, but I'll just stay away from medical adhesive remover.
So, tomorrow, I have to be at the clinic at 8am for blood work and fluids. The hope is, after that, we get the weekend off!! Sorry this update was so long, but I think you'll agree, I had a lot to tell you!! Hope it was informative, and just message me if you have any questions!! That's all for now!!
tired 
