Day +19 - I'm free! Kind of...

Alrighty.... Day +19, discharged from Roswell this morning, yay!  So I'm mostly free... I'm back staying at the Hope Lodge again because I am required to stay local with my caregiver (mom) until my Dr releases me.  Could be up to 2 more weeks but if things keep going the way they have been I should be looking at the beginning of next week (fingers crossed!).  Most of the days since my last post on day +10 were pretty uneventful.   I did have one fun night about a week ago were about 20 minutes after taking my nausea cocktail I started experiencing some chest pain.  I ended up getting an EKG, being put on a cardiac monitor, and was given a nitro tab (which tastes horrible by the way).  Apparently the EKG showed prolonged QT's, which can be caused my most of the nausea meds I was on.  So we ended up having to scratch my meds and switch to Ativan and Compazine for nausea.  So yeah, that was a fun night.  Anyway, getting ready for discharge involved more than I'd expected.  I had to be re-evaluated by physical therapy and I had to meet with the dietician to go over my outpatient diet (which is a whole bunch of fun, but could be worse I guess).  I also had to talk to someone from the pharmacy to go over all my meds (the pill box I have is insane) because I'll be on antiviral, antibiotic, vitamin supplements, nausea meds and a bunch of other stuff as needed for a very long time.  On the plus side, I had another ultrasound done of my arm (where I initially had a blood clot around my picc line) and there is no visible clot... so no more evil Lovenox!  Wo-hoo!!  I also had to have another EKG done to make sure things looked good.  Oh and I forgot, I ended up with an infection somehow so I'd been on IV antibiotics in the hospital for the last 12 days or so... and I had to have another echo done of my heart.  Apparently the type of infection I had likes to set up shop in the heart valves.  Luckily everything looked good.  So here we are.... I have to go back in to clinic tomorrow morning and Saturday morning for blood work and meetings with the nurses.  Then on Monday I meet with my Dr (after more blood work) and find out when I can go home.  Once I'm home I'll be going back to my regular oncologist at Guthrie after a week for blood work and a check up.  Then I believe around day +60 I'm going to have another scan to be re-staged.  Then sometime between then and day +100 I will start my maintenance drug (called Brentuximab) which I believe is a 30 minute infusion every 3 weeks... I think the goal for that is a year, as long as I don't develop any neuropathy (which can be a side effect).  So that's the game plan for now at least...  I'm just happy to not be sleeping in the hospital tonight, and I'm one day closer to squeezing my little guy.  :)  XO