Ok... so I'm all ready to go. Came back up to Hope Lodge in Buffalo with my mom on Tuesday so I could be at Roswell bright and early Wed for blood work and my bone marrow harvest. Things actually went pretty smoothly... everything was running on time and I didn't have to do much waiting around. Got all my pre-op stuff done, signed all the necessary papers, got an IV started and was ready to roll. They gave me some versed in my IV before going to the OR, so I was pretty happy on my way there, and I only remember the mask being on my face for about a minute before I was out cold. Woke up in recovery and felt ok (I was full of dilaudid), definitely had a sore throat from being intubated. But man oh man when the pain meds started to wear off... wooo. I felt like I'd been hit in the hips with a sledgehammer. They had to come back in and change my pressure dressings cause I was still bleeding a little bit, and they gave me more meds for pain. I also had to have a blood transfusion done because they took almost 2 pints of blood and marrow out of me in the OR. The transfusion took a couple of hours, so I just hung out with mom and tried to knit (very unsuccessfully I must say). We got back to Hope Lodge around 3:30 and I just took it easy for the rest of the night... pain meds weren't helping much and I was pretty sick from the anesthesia. Sorry if the pic grosses you out, I couldn't resist and had to have mom take a picture when they were changing the bandages. Those are just steri strips covering the holes.
I went back to the BMT clinic this morning after getting more blood work (another 16 tubes) for my pre-admission work up, and at around 10:30 I went to get another central line placed for my chemo. This one was a little smaller than the last one I had placed (for stem cell collection) so it wasn't as bad. So I now have my new "jewelry" with 5 lumens instead of 2. I had to go back up for one more blood draw after the line was placed because they had forgotten to check my kidney function. After that mom and I were off to enjoy my last day of freedom for a while. We went to Red Robin for lunch (neither of us had been there before) and gorged ourselves, LOL. Came back to Hope Lodge and took a nap, which was probably a horrible idea, cause now I'm wide awake and I should be sleeping... but what can ya do. Spent an hour or so in the kitchen talking to some of the great people that we've met while staying here and saying my goodbyes since I'll be leaving in the morning to get admitted. I'm supposed to be there bright and early at 6:30 (oh joy!!) to get everything rolling. Not looking forward to getting poison for breakfast, but it's part of the deal unfortunately. Ready or not, here I go! LOL
No comments:
Post a Comment