June 2, 2014

I had a much better night's sleep last night.  I'm in middle of day three chemo.  From Wed evening I was given high doses of steroids and constant fluids.  On Saturday I received Rituxan, the first -chemo.  I've had two bouts of throwing up, but much less than running ultras.  I had a little shortness of  breath and dealt with heartburn, but generally had few side effects.- Yesterday, I got Cytoxan infusion for three hours and then did it again 12 hours later.  We repeated the process again today.  Today's minor side affect was urination urgency issues.  I didn't have much control and wet my pants before I could get everything pointed into the bottle (they measure everything I do here).  I've had much better success lately.  They wanted me to move around more today, so I got on the recumbent bike.  I asked the nurse what the PR was for it, but she didn't know what I was talking about. ;).  So I just tooled around for 30 minutes.  Funny, someone pulled down my window blinds yesterday and it fell off the wall.  Two nice guys came from maintenance and put them back up.  Unfortunately, they fell down again.  I'm beginning to look like a hoodlum.  They won't let me shave for fear of bleeding.  Apparently, my white blood cell count has dropped from something like 92,000 to below 40,000.  My  platelets came in real low at 8 (1,000s).   I got five IV bags and increased up to 32, but I am now back to 8.  Apparently, chemo eats platelets and they are giving me lots of chemo.  As one nurse put it, "You're pretty toxic right now."  Bottom line I feel better.