Thursday ~ 30 July: Day 12

Well today was an interesting day. I felt a lot better this morning when we went over to the OTU clinic. They did my vitals and blood work. While we were waiting on the results and the doctor, I was hooked up to my morning dose of cefepime (IV anti-biotic). Immediately things started going black and I couldn't breathe. A lot like when I had a reaction and found out I was allergic to penicillin. The IV was immediately stopped, they got me on oxygen and gave me something in my IV. I also got nauseous and a few minutes later they gave me IV compazine for that. After 10 minutes or so I was feeling much better. So scratch that drug. There had been some discussion about even giving it to me when I was in the hospital back in February because of some similarity is has to penicillin. But I had it then with no problems and have been taking it for a little over a week this round. This was the drug Mike was having to hook me up to for a nightly dose also. I sure am glad I didn't have this reaction at home. And I hope I've had my quota of anaphylactic type reactions!

Now I have a new antibiotic, ertapenem, aka Invanz. I've had that quite a few times with no problems. It will be given once a day only until I engraft, and will be given to me by the nurses in the OTU clinic. That makes me feel better.

And speaking of engraftment: my red count was down another point today. My platelets were 29, but I had a transfusion yesterday. We can't really see anything from that number. White count was 0.3 and those ever so important neutrophils finally had a positive count: 0.07. At home that would have been rounded up to 0.1. They tell me that the counts won't go in a continuous upward motion, that there will be hills and valleys until I am engrafted, but to see anything is such a miracle to me. It makes it hard not to be able to send a thank you to my wonderful donor. I am continuing to think positively and am visualising new bone marrow making itself at home in my bones, cranking out new blood cells.

My arm was really sore with the new Picc line, so I reluctantly took two oxycodones. My nurses keep telling me there is no need to hurt with everything else going on, so I finally took them at their word. The two pills worked great, and I'm hoping my arm will just feel better tomorrow. Other than that, I'm still a little shaky, but as the toxic levels of the anti-rejection drug go down, that should get better. My headache is already pretty much receded.

Dinner tonight was Cancun Shrimp: roasted jumbo shrimp, sliced avocado, cocktail sauce and saltine crackers. Yummy supper for a summer evening. We roasted the shrimp yesterday, but I don't think we will do them that way again for shrimp cocktail. Didn't really care for the olive oil on them to eat cold.

namasté,