Day 0

Today is Day 0, and it is pretty anticlimactic, which is what we like. I had total body irradiation this morning which made me a bit nauseated. I seem to be more sensitive to it than when I started. For those of you that are interested, the dose was 2 grays. I asked for metal sunglasses like they have in tanning booths to help protect my eyes, but they did not have any, and the doctor said that the low dose might cause cataracts in the future, but no serious eye damage. Still, who wants to speed up cataracts. 

I also have had a headache for most of the day. I don't think that this is from the radiation, but perhaps some allergies flaring up? Or not enough liquids? Hard to say. I asked for some aspirin, but it conflicts with one of my other drugs, so they gave me 15 mg of quick release morphine instead. I am not sure that morphine is doing much for me these days. I may have become acclimated to the dosages that I have been getting. It did not even get rid of my headache.

The stem cells themselves went without a hitch. Day 0 starts the counting for the 100 days. I do not have to be in the hospital for that time, but I have to be close by, because after I am released, I will have blood draws 2 or even 3 times a week. They test for donor-host disease, which means that either the donor's white blood cells, or my white blood cells have decided that the other one is the enemy and should be destroyed. I hope that does not happen. If it does occur, they can give me drugs to suppress the immune response, but that raises the chances of infections. The test is fairly sophisticated and can only be done here - neither Waldo County Hospital, nor Midcoast Hospital, nor any other hospital in Maine can do them. If all goes well, after the hundred days, I will only have to come in once a month, but I will probably drive down for that.

Now we wait for the donor stem cells to move into my bone marrow and begin producing blood cells. This is called grafting, and can take 4 to 6 weeks. It is a relatively dangerous time as far as infection risk, so I am being as careful as possible. The good news is that my own neutrophils have not dropped to 0 yet. They are at 570, with 3-5 thousand being normal, and below 500 being officially neutropenic. We will see what they are tomorrow. I am sure that I lost a lot during the radiation, and the chemo will continue to drop my count for another 5 days. 

Leif