Saturday, Oct 18: Cat naps

I was seriously sleep deprived this past week, especially getting only an hour or so each of
the last two nights.  Yesterday was odd.  If I was waiting in the doctor's office waiting room, all I had to do was put my chin in my palm and I was asleep.  When a nurse took 20 minutes to enter my drug history, I intentionally took three cat naps.  The doc had to wake me up when he came into the room.   All in, I bet I took 15 two-to-five minute naps yesterday, although none while driving.  I moved around a lot yesterday, as a result, my pain was much lower when I went to bed.  It was also nice to know I had an actual pain pill rather than a vitamin.  I was up at 3:00 for about an hour, but slept till 8:00.

The doc told me to pay attention to my esophagus.  Apparently, it takes a lot of abuse from all the drugs.  The past couple days I haven't been able to swallow all the food in my mouth.  I sent Dr Patel an email and will wait for instructions.

The loss of strength in right hand is weird.  I now have a better idea of how courageous my darling wife is.  She puts up with far more issues on a daily basis and battles through with a smile.  I can't turn the key in the car, turn a door handle or a lamp switch, or open some medicine bottles.  I'm hopeful next week's visit with neurologist will confirm that this is reaction to drugs, which may be reduced at a later date.

If the 100-Day biopsy shows evidence of leukemia, I fear I will  still feel ill and will face more rounds of sledgehammer chemo in hospital and more troubled recoveries at home.  On the the other hand, if I can get better, I'd like to return to work, maybe at the first of the year.  It's a blessing to have long term disability insurance from my employer.  It pays a hefty percentage of my salary while I'm unable to work.  Hopefully, my condition will settle down and the 100-Day bone marrow biopsy will show no leukemia. Right now I could not work.  My immune system is depressed.  I've had drug reactions that leave me exhausted.  Some days are good and I ride three hours on the bike.  Other days I'm like a zombie trying to make all my clinic visits.

I think I have a really good doctor.  She's done an amazing job keeping me alive and put me on a path to a cure.  If I survive long term, she will be the fist doc to have a patient cured of this kind of lymphoma to leukemia transformation.  Pretty cool.

I previously mentioned my best friend from high school's son, Ryan.  He's an electrical engineer and collapsed at work.  They ran a battery if tests to see if he had a tumor, stroke, etc, but there was too much bleeding and swelling to learn much.  The docs first told Davy and Pat he had little chance to survive and if he did, he would be seriously impaired.  Well, the young man is back home with them and has only short term memory loss, which the docs say will get better.  More tests are needed to determine what's wrong in his head, but it's a blessing to have him home and improving.  What can you say, God's good.