Day +1 Eau de corn

Tuesday July 17, 2012
Quail Run Lot 15 and
Moffitt Cancer Center room 3715

 

I am out running this morning at 6:30.  Hot and humid.  73 degrees.  Stretches, exercise, lifting weights, shower, call David to see how he’s doing (he says fine), make food to take with me, pack up all my stuff for a day at the hospital.  Have to get some groceries and bring them back to the refrigerator before I can leave for the hospital.  I didn’t get home last night until after 9:00 and I was too tired to stop at the grocery then.  Out of bread and bananas among other things.

 

When I get to his room, here is what I find.  Dig those electric sox!

So far things are still going pretty well.  His sleep is no better and no worse than usual. He’s still sleeping 60-90 minutes and then waking, all night long.  I chastise him to ask for sleeping medication.  A body trying to recover from this sort of assault needs multiple hours of sleep not just one hour at a time.

 

I notice that he smells like creamed corn.  We had heard this might happen as a result of the preservative they put in the stem cells to be able to freeze them.  I sniff his arm.  It’s not coming out of his pores.  It’s his breath so I guess it’s coming from his stomach or his lungs.   Very strange perfume that’s for sure.   They say it will last a few days.

 

So far, he’s still feeling good.  He had one small incident of vomiting at lunch but unlike yesterday, today he was able to recover and finish his meal.

 

His counts have started to drop a little bit.   This is the board on the wall in his room.  White blood counts, Hemoglobin and Platelets in that order are checked and listed every day so he too can see what’s happening.

 

After the transplant, it takes 10 to 14 days for the cells to “engraft” or find their way to the bone marrow and start to function.   During that time, the white blood cell count and, therefore, the immune system go to almost zero.  This is the critical time.  With no defenses, any type of infection can be catastrophic. 

 

 

His social worker Janice comes by for a visit to talk with him about any “pressing” problems.  She mentions that she heard we had a problem the night of the transplant.  HA!  Word gets around when you are irate.  So we fill her in.  She’s very apologetic.  It’s over for us now but I do hope that our experience and unhappiness with it will help someone else down the road. 

Janice discusses with David a list of alternative therapy services available to patients here.  Among the things they have are visiting musicians who come to your room and play for you.  Isn’t that terrific?  David signs up for that, a massage, a biofeedback session, a chair yoga session and a visit from the art therapist.   After he tries each of these he can request return visits from whomever he likes.

We don’t see much of his main care team today.  Thankfully, he doesn’t need anything.  He is doing fine. 

 

 

 

Each day for both the day shift and the night shift his nurse and his “technician” come in at the beginning of their shifts to say hello, see if he needs anything and put their names on a white board posted along with the calendar on the wall at the foot of his bed.  You can tell by the angle of the picture that it’s over my head.

 

 

The nurses do the medical things like dispense medications and draw the bloods but the “techs” do nearly everything else like take the vital signs multiple times a day, change the sheets, clean up the vomit, make sure he has all the soaps and antiseptics and whatever else the room is supposed to have.

 

Here’s Vance, his nurse for today and yesterday, at the desk.

 

Don taking vital signs,.

 

We spend most of the day sitting on the sofa in front of the window.  He’s playing on his computer.

 

We’re watching the rain fall.

 

 

We take another 6 laps around the horse shoe track.

 

 

This evening is like last evening.  His dinner is served.  He eats it.   I read to him.  Today we finish the last of the 892 pages of Shadow Country.  They check his vital signs.  He watches Stewart and Colbert. 

 

I can see that our days will become a routine as we wait for the other shoe to drop.