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September 28, 2006 , Day -12
Friends,
This has been a busy week for us. Saturday, I helped a friend remove a palm tree from my front yard. Well, mostly I supervised. Then I drove my truck up to Escondido to deliver the tree to his house. That was my first time driving again since I went into the hospital. I got home pretty exhausted. Sunday, I went to support some friends who are doing a century ride this coming weekend. We were at a restaurant, and Menchie ordered some Chicken strips. Turns out they had some kind of dairy in them, and I ended up in Urgent Care at the hospital so that they could evaluate the hives and other allergy symptoms that resulted. The symptoms went away before the doctor got to see me, so we went home. Monday we went back to the hospital to get my PICC line dressing change. Tuesday I rested! Wednesday, we went shopping for a sofa/bed and went to a doctors appointment with the vascular surgeon. Today was the big day. I was at the hospital at 6am to get ready to get the Groshong Catheter put in. The surgery started at 0830. I was in recovery until about 11:15, which made me late for my 11:00am appointment with Radiation/Oncology. After that appointment, which lasted until about 12:30, I was finally able to eat breakfast. Then I went to see my doctor to go over the final plans for the transplant. The doctor answered my questions and he examined me and determined I was in great shape. Tomorrow we go back to the hospital to get the dressing changed on my new catheter and get the PICC line removed.
The Radiation/Oncology simulation was interesting. They had to fit me to their aiming device, which was a nearly vertical plexiglass sheet with a holder for Xray cassettes. This sheet had holes for long rods that go under the arms and in the groin to ensure the patient is properly positioned in the beam of the linear accelerator across the room. They took a couple of xrays using this setup while I was standing there. After a few minutes my legs were shaking so hard I had to sit down. In order to ensure they get this exactly right in the future, they tattooed dots on my chest and back. My first tattoos! Menchie can't even see them. Anyway, from there, they gave me a CT scan. That was it! Now I am ready to start radiation treatments on Tuesday.
Monday night I will be going into the hospital to start the transplant process. I expect to be in the hospital for about a month. I doubt if we will send out an update on Monday, but Tuesday we will get back to the semi-daily updates.
Please note that I am now counting down to the day of my transplant rather than counting up from the first day of my chemo. No lab results from today yet. I will probably get them tomorrow.
Lab Results |
Blood Cell Type |
Normal Low |
9/18 |
9/20 |
9/22 |
9/28 |
| WBC |
4.5 |
6.4 |
10.2 |
8.9 |
nr |
| RBC |
4.3 |
3.22 |
3.41 |
3.32 |
nr |
| HGB |
13.9 |
10.4 |
10.9 |
10.5 |
nr |
| PLT |
130 |
256 |
310 |
266 |
nr |
I hope everyone has a great Friday and weekend!
Menchie and Ted
tw@wilcoxent.com
mench@wilcoxent.com
www.wilcoxent.com
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