Today's IPOP clinic session was nearly identical to yesterday's: Zophran, dexamethasone, melphalan, saline. The only difference was that today the nurse cultured the catheter entrance wound in response to Huong's concerns about the color of the immediately surrounding skin. We'll find out the results tomorrow.
All of the really nasty stuff is now in. Tomorrow, the recovery begins, as I get my stem cells back, and we all hold our breath waiting for them to wander back to the bone marrow and begin manufacturing blood cells again.
I did have one side effect as a result of yesterday's chemo: insomnia. I had trouble getting to sleep last night, in spite of the day's vigorous exercise; and woke up several times, having more trouble returning to sleep each time. I'm hoping against a repeat performance tonight.
Speaking of vigorous exercise, we once again set out on a long afternoon walk, this time to the Inner Harbor, about 1-1/4 miles each way. This time, though, I became very tired on the return leg, and we wound up taking a cab home. Once again our route took us past a self-styled patisserie, but this one turned out not to produce baguettes at all. Sob.
I have been given a battery of new drugs that I am to begin taking tomorrow: Avelox (an antibiotic), Fluconazole (an antifungal), and Valacyclovir (an antiviral). This last one is especially important, because many stem cell transplant patients come down with bad cases of shingles or oral cold sores or both. Meanwhile, I am supposed to stop taking the allopurinol, since we will not be killing any more cancer cells.
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Stem cell therapy is set to become a major part of ATS, cancer, hearing loss treatments and of course plastic surgery. The need is however, is to ensure that these are stored in perfect condition before actually getting transplanted to the receiver’s body. This has made the industry of 'controlled rate freezers' to grow at a fast pace to keep up with the demand. I am doing a paper on ‘The Uses of Stem Cell Perseverance and the Techniques of Storing Them’ and found your post valuable.
ReplyDeleteCynthia Beattie Mcgill