Tuesday, Aug 26 (Day 5)

Urgent peeing kept me awake again last night.  However, things got really interesting around 4:30.  I had a serious diarrhea incident and ended up taking a shower.  Since I didn't call the nurse to tape over my chest ports, I washed from the waist down, but that was where the problem was.  I then cleaned upon the floor with antiseptic wipes.  I'm one of the really healthy patients on the floor and this is a challenge.  I have no idea how the older, sicker people get by.  After the transplant I weighed 193.  This morning I registered 178, which is a little below admission weight.  Two things help me: 1) faith; 2) a sense of humor.  Plus, it turned out that ultra running was good training for dealing with cancer.

They did a urine test yesterday and think they can give me some drug to ease my symptoms.  That would definitely improve my quality of life.

I'm day 5.  Around day 5-10 patients bottom out of red and white blood cells and platelets and may develop fevers and feel lousy.  I'm still feeling good.

Prognosis?  Here's what I know.  There's a 2-5% chance I could suffer a serious transplant rejection and die.  However, my donor matched 10 out of 10 and I haven't experienced any early rejection signs, such as skin problems, so I'm going to ignore this for now.  Once my white blood cells grow back the transplant could be technically considered a success; that will take another 10-20 days.  The odds of a successful transplant are 60%. Ignore the fact I have two cancers (lymphoma and leukemia), which is a little troubling.  60% assumes both the transplanted new cells grow white blood cells and that the leukemia does not return.  At transplant, the chemo took the leukemia down to zero, but some residual cancer cells will survive.  The idea is that my new and improved immune system will kill them off.  Apparently, everyone has residual bad cells of some kind and their immune systems police the body.  Hopefully the transplant will cure both the lymphoma and leukemia.

Well I'm ready for another day at cancer camp.  Mark and Pam are stopping by to visit and I asked them to pick up some potato soup from Saltgrass.  Life is good.