Day Zero

Well the big day is here. I entered the hospital just a week ago. Last Tuesday started my chemo regiment. I received 16 two hour infusions of bulsulfan over the next four days. On Saturday the last of the chemo was a three hour infusion of Etopohos. So far my counts have not dropped dramatically and so the side effects have been pretty mild. I have been fatigued and constantly dealing with some level of a headache and nausea. Unfortunately the best medicine to control the nausea seems to be the cause of my headache. I’ll put up with that as don’t want to get into a total puking mode. Sunday, the day after Etopohos, has been my worst day yet. I was headachy, nauseas and exhausted all day. My counts will continue to go lower before the new cells bring them back up, so could have more days like Sunday coming up.

They are setting up for the transplant now. Because I am an auto donor, my stem cells have been frozen. The will be thawed out in batches and put back into my system through the IV in my neck. These cells will grow and replace the cells dying off from the chemo. It may take up to 12 days for my cells to get back to good levels.