So Much For A Weekend Getaway

Sorry for the lack of updates. I just enjoyed Sloan so much that I decided to stay for the entire week!

"So What Happened?!"

Seems my white cells haven't grown as fast as last time.... No more Superman ::tear::
But it really isn't just that... there's a lot more going on.

Well, does everybody remember those pesky mouth sores? They've been busy!
They get progressively worse each day... and it is not pretty. (Nick 0, Mouth Sores 1)

Saturday
The Doctors started me on my painkillers, but through IV. This brought tremendous more relief then taking the pills. (Nick 1, Mouth Sores 1)

Monday
So, the mouth sores were getting worse, and the painkiller wasn't cutting it (Mouth Sores +1 Point). So the doctors told me about this Pain pump (Nick +1 Point). Instead of giving me an IV Push of the meds every few hours, it injects a smaller dose continuously. If I feel some extra pain, for instance I aggravate the mouth sores, I have a little button to press to give me more. Don't worry, the pump will only allow me to hit the button so many times an hour. :-) it won't let me drift off into comatose land.

This seemed to start doin the Job (Nick 2, Mouth Sores 2)

Tuesday
I like to think of Tuesday as my trip back to the 60's.

Monday night into Tuesday morning I developed double vision.
When I say double vision, I don't mean the occasional splitting of an image.
No Sir!
I'm talking about two crystal clear images from my two eyeballs at all times!
To do anything productive I need to close one eye, and because of my Astigmatism, I always close my left eye. I almost have it trained to close all by itself :-)

The next symptom I'll describe as "feeling the music" I had entered a very funky state of feeling. I felt very out there. Kinda like I should be living out of an old VW bus, wear a headband, and babble things about the "establishment"

Well now, we are building quite the list. We can also add random narcolepsy to this list.
Pretty much, I'll just start taking naps. Here, There, and Everywhere! I could be in a conversation with my dad, and I will slowly lose interest and just put my head down. It's actually pretty neat!

Saving the worst for last. The Painkillers didn't seem to be doing their job anymore. Either that, or the pain was simply getting worse. So we had to make a change!

Wednesday
Wednesday morning we got a hold of the "Pain Team!"
I kid-you-not. There are a group of doctors that are the "pain team." They came in to evaluate me.

We went directly to the pain team, because the rest of my symptoms are all side-effects of the pain med I was on. BTW, I should mention I was also on a super high dose.

They looked into my mouth and just like everybody else, they shrieked in terror. They recommended a new drug to be used in the Pain Pump. No longer wanting to feel like a hippy, I immediately agreed.

By 9:00PM I am only experiencing one hippy symptom. The double vision. The Doctor says that this is a common side-effect of all these pain meds. The medicine is doing an semi-OK job at controlling the pain but hopefully we can work out a better dose tomorrow!

So What About Those Fevers
As I mentioned, when you're nete Neutropenic and you have a fever, the Doctors need to make sure you don't have any sort of infection. So since Friday, They have been taking daily blood-cultures and pumping my full of a bunch of different antibiotics and antifungals.

Today my doctor is pretty confident in saying that the fevers are only being caused by the mouth sores, and nothing else.

"Great, Let's Get Rid Of Those Mouth Sores!!!!"
Well that's the tricky part. In order to get rid of the mouth sores, you need white blood cells. As the white blood cells grow, they will simply just flock to my mouth and begin it's invasion.

(I've actually turned this into a pretty cool battle scene in my head)

So I don't know what's taking those white blood cells so long.
I told them I would treat them to a greatn feast when they declare themselves a victory in this epic battle!!!!

When Am I Getting Out Of Here?

Not sure....
definitely not until I've grown some white blood cells.
I think once I have a good count, and the mouth sores start to heal I should homeward bound!

Until Then... Pray for those white blood cells!