Sunday: Day -6

Couldn't sleep last night. Probably due to the two cups of coffee I had with dessert at Tayst last night. Sooo, what's a girl to do? Abbey had brought me my bread maker, so I put in a batch of dough to make, then made Peach Almond Sticky Rolls for breakfast this morning. My Mom had made Peach Jam last week from the peaches Steve (Mike's brother and Sally's spouse) had brought back from Louisiana the weekend before. Mom sent me a couple of jars of it, so I used one for the filling in the rolls. I used slivered almonds for the nuts in the sticky part. Boy were they tasty!

Something has happened to my Palm PDA. This is a real problem as our entire family lives our lives from what's on my Palm. It seemed to be with the handheld as it wouldn't HotSync on either computer. Sally is going to see if she can do a hard reset on it today whilst I'm getting my treatment and hopefully that will fix it.

The medical part of the day started out pretty much the same as usual, with the exception of starting to take Nexium when I got up this morning. Then over to the to OTU clinic, get vitals, have blood drawn, etc. Got the Zofran (anti-nausea), Decadron (the steroid) and Fludarabine (the chemo) and fluids. Also had my daily visit with CRNP (Kelly, as Donna was off today) and Dr. Kassim. My platelets were below 10, (have I mentioned Vanderbilt doesn't tell you how low when you are below 10? Just that you are below), so I had to get a unit of those. My Tuesday bag was 637 ccs, the largest bag I've ever seen. Today's bag was only 197 ccs. It goes in a lot quicker. I like that they pump platelets here. At home they just drip and it takes a long time. Also got to do without IV Benadryl. Tonight I will need to continue to take Levaquin (antibiotic). With the weekend labs and getting the platelets we were 12:30ish getting away from clinic.

I asked about continuing to go out to eat and have been told that is fine as long as I feel like it. I just have to follow the guidelines. This can continue until I go in the hospital Wednesday morning. When I get out of the hospital I will have had the transplant and must stay protected until engraftment happens. That should take 2 to 3 weeks. Once I'm engrafted and my blood counts start coming up so that I am not neutropenic, we can talk about going out to eat again. I'm of the opinion we should take advantage of all possiblities ahead of time. LOL.

Kiki and her husband, Mark, came up to bring us my Reiki Voodoo doll. We went out to lunch and had a lovely time. The place we went is a bbq place downtown called Ribby's. We ate out on the second floor patio and watched all the tourists down below. We got two orders of the Hog Platter and sides of baked beans for all. This would have been the dieticion's idea of heaven. Can we all say, "ANIMAL PROTEIN"? There were ribs, sausage, chicken wings, pork tenderloin, pickles, peppers and blocks of cheddar cheese. I am sure Mike will like this place. Then we went and played tourist at The Hermatige. And I got loads of pics of the Men's Restroom. I promise to post pics and an explanation later.

There are severe thunderstorms going on around here now. Penny sized hail and winds up to 60mph. If the weather permits we are heading out to Rhumba for dinner tonight. "Tropical flair combines with top notch Latin, Asian and Caribbean cuisine where globe trotting tastes have found a home." Rhumba is another locally owned restaurant in the West End and we are looking forward to dining there. Hopefully we can go a bit earlier tonight. A new episode of The Next Food Network Star is on at 9:00. For some reason I've been watching again this year and I hate to miss one. And I'm told that rush hour ends earlier on Sunday night. And I'm telling you. Sally is forgetting how to be a grandmother hanging out with me. Going out to fine dining every night and eating continental hours is something she hasn't been used to lately. But she is a great sport and willing to try out all kinds of new things with me. We really are having fun. It's nice for us to have some time like this. At home we seem to stay busy with so many other things instead of having sister time. If the weather is bad, we will just make something exciting at home instead.

Now I am off to work on photos.