Saturday, March 6, 2010

MDS Becomes AML - You're Not Going Anywhere, Mister

Yesterday's counts were:
  • Platelets: 11,000
  • Hemoglobin: 7.3
  • White Cells: 1.6
Today's counts are:
  • Platelets: 6,000
  • Hemoglobin: 9.1
  • White Cells: 0.3
Initially, these counts were alarming. What the hell was going on? I thought they were supposed to start coming back up by now.

Turns out we'd all miscalculated. Even Dr. O.

We were a week ahead of ourselves. The counts should be bottoming out right about now, and starting back up early next week. This is a three-week process; not a two-week process, which I had somehow convinced myself it was.

Dr. O had lost track of when we'd started. But, when Penny and I corrected her (it was a week ago Monday), she relaxed, saying, "Oh, then we're right on schedule.

"This treatment is actually more intensive that the initial one, even though you get the drugs on fewer days. The drug is stronger and the dosage larger." It bottoms out at about 15 days.

Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know that. If I had, I might've just stayed home.

As with January's treatment, home is beginning to seem like a mythical dream, a fantasy place that's far away and unattainable. Oh, to be able to walk from room to room, floor to floor; to be able to wander into the kitchen and to open the refrigerator door just to see what's inside; to eat real food at a real table; to luxuriate in the decision of which TV to nap in front of; to have commercial-free movie channels to watch.

This is wearing on me. The room is a small universe, made smaller by the frequent need to close the door to shut out ambient noise. Cleaning ladies yelling orders at each other; my next-door neighbor's TV blasting in a desperate effort to penetrate her deaf ears.

"It's going to be a beautiful weekend," Laina said the other night.

"Doesn't affect me," I replied.

Okay, okay—I know that in the end, this will all be worth it. Still, when you've largely confined to a small room, living a daily life whose few variations are comprised mostly of what medications are being pumped into you, patience is sometimes hard to muster.

Yesterday, between two bags of blood transfusion, I showered. Lord knows I needed it. I'd begun to stink in my private areas like a homeless person. But, the best part? I left the room independently to do it.

I shoulda stayed all night in there.

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