Day 13 Third Chemo Round - A Day at the Hospital

This morning I had a very early breakfast. I couldn't have anything to eat or drink after 8:30 a.m. because I was having a CT scan at 11:00 a.m. I had to report to the Stem Cell Unit before going to the Imaging Department for my CT scan. The nurse practioner wanted to check my vital statistics to make sure I'm not running a fever. She also wanted to make sure that I wasn't dehydrated.  Everything went well until I mentioned the side effect of the Neupogen that I felt last night. As soon as I mentioned a racing heart beat and pain in my chest, the nurse practitioner booked me for an ECG. The nurse practitioner was being diligent in checking me over fully. I had 8 vials of blood taken from me. Six of those vials were put into a culture tube to check and see if I have any infections coursing through my body. The nurse was also having problems with my picc line. She was able to flush the line (inject saline into it) but she couldn't get any blood from it. So another kind of medication was injected into me using the picc line and I had to wait for 30 minutes before the nurse could try again to use the picc line to get blood from me.

I was starting to worry that I was going to miss my 11:00 appointment for the CT scan. I arrived at the Stem Cell Unit at 9:15 a.m. The nurse and nurse practitioner managed to get my blood taken out of me for testing before 11 a.m. They had to cancel the ECG machine request. This meant that I had to go back to the Stem Cell Unit after my CT scan in order to have the ECG done. Thank goodness I had the CT scan done with no problems. I then hurried back up to the Stem Cell Unit. After another 15 to 20 minute wait, I finally had the ECG done. I was then free to leave as the ECG was normal.

As I was taking the elevators down to the front entrance of the hospital, I called hubby to come and pick me up. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and reading a book at his work. When I woke up this morning, I did not expect to spend so much time at the hospital. Thank goodness I had no other appointments to run off to.

Last night, a friend asked me what the Neupogen will do for me. I'm on a high dose of Neupogen. I'm getting the Neupogen injections so that it will stimulate the growth of my stem cells and also release them into my blood stream. Next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I will be an outpatient of the Stem Cell Unit and they will use a dialysis machine to harvest my stem cells from my blood stream. They need to harvest 2.5 million stem cells over three days next week. They will then freeze them and on October 30 all my frozen stem cells will be re-injected into me. I hope this helps you understand the process a little better.

I finished another book today, entitlted "The Guest List" by Fern Michaels. I did a lot of reading while I was waiting for all my appointments. Considering I had to miss some meals and limit my liquid intake, I had a good day.