I Survived

I'm finally back, having survived the second half of the tandem bone marrow transplant. Lest we forget what that involved, it amounted to five days of high-dose chemotherapy to kill my lymphoma (and my bone marrow, and my hair follicles) followed by infusion of two bags of my own stem cells harvested earlier, followed by about a week of tedium as we waited for A) my blood counts to collapse, and B) my stem cells to take over and start making new blood cells.

My counts went really low, much lower than the first transplant. My platelet count dropped to 11,000, which is scary low, and I broke out in masses of dull red subcutaneous bleeds all over my arms, shins and thighs. In the end I needed three transfusions of platelets and two units of packed red cells to keep me alive while we waited for my stem cells to "take".

They finally started to show signs of taking off a couple of days ago, but it wasn't really until yesterday and today that one could look at my lab results and see definite signs of progress. My white count will probably reach normal tomorrow, though it'll take longer for my hemoglobin and platelet count to return to normal as they take longer to mature.

The chemo was... unpleasant. No mistake of that. But I didn't think it was much worse than anything I'd already had, except for one bizarre side effect of Cytoxan, a side effect so strange you almost wouldn't think it possible: it caused an intense burning to set in in my mouth and throat, identical to the burning of super-hot peppers. Only there was no flavor to speak of, just the burn, and since I hadn't actually eaten anything, I couldn't flush caustic chemicals out of my taste buds with a glass of milk or anything. The only thing they can do for that burning (and it was by far the hottest burn I've ever experienced in my life, exceeding every hot pepper I've ever tried) was lots and lots of morphine.

But though I had some side effects from the chemo, and required supportive treatment in the form of platelet and red blood cell transfusions, I didn't have any complications. No fevers or infections, no shingles, no gastrointestinal bleeding, nothing. Most of the time I felt so good it was hard to remember why I was in the hospital in the first place, though when my counts collapsed last week, I suddenly remembered in a hurry.

Anyway, I'm back, the cancer is presumed dead, and I'm on the recovery road. I already feel better today than I did yesterday, though the effort of getting all my junk home did sort of wear me out a bit.