June 17, 2009 Home Sweet Home

When Julia and I met with Megan Connelly, the Transplant Coordinator, before the harvesting began one of the things that she brought up was the fact that this is one of the few times that you enter the hospital feeling well and leave felling just the opposite. She wasn’t kidding.

The last few days have not been easy. Constant nausea and diarrhea and the battle with fever kept me more than interested. They had to wait several days before they could give me anything for the diarrhea because they needed to test it for bacteria. Everything had a three day test cycle. My first three days of consistent diarrhea, my first three days over 101.5 had to have blood tests run. They were all looking for some types of bacteria. That is the greatest fear with one of these transplants is that some type of bacterial takes over the body.

The good thing was that my blood counts were improving each day. The white cell count went from 0.2 on Sunday to 1.6 on Monday to 4.6 on Tuesday. Things were moving so fast that the doctor told me on Monday that unless I had a fever in the next 24 hours that I would be able to go home. I’m never had such pressure on me to stay healthy.

Those 24 hours were a little dicey as I fought nausea and the ability to take pills. Sounds stupid but I was having problems taking even the tiniest of pills. In between, the fever kept creeping up to the magic 100 degree mark. If either of those issues are not taken care of, I’m in for at least another day.

Luckily, I was able to get it done but not without one bout of vomiting. I was getting better, but a long way from being normal.

Even though virtually everyone that I had come in contact with at the Mayo had been fabulous, I could not wait to get out of the place. If I was going to feel like crap somewhere I’d rather be at home. After I got by the 8 PM vitals check, I felt pretty confident that I could handle the temperature requirement. For whatever reason I tended to feel my worst between 4 and 8 PM and typically had higher fevers then.

The last thing that I had to accomplish was to get my pills down. My first attempt at 8PM did not work and I began to panic that I was going to have to spend another day in the hospital. However, given another chance at 10PM, I was able to get the pills down. As long as something did not go wrong in the next 12 hours, I was home free.

Everything fell into place and at 10AM I received the official word that I was going to be discharged. I couldn’t stop thinking about getting outside the hospital and feel the heat on my face. I had felt cold almost from the minute I stepped into the place, but was always afraid to turn down the AC for fear that it would raise my temperature.

The first thing I did after getting in the house was flop on the couch. Boy, did that feel good. Now that I am home, I know that things will really move quickly. Tuesday night was not without its thrills as my brilliant plan to eat many very small meals to do a better job with my stomach failed miserably. Needless to say, another lost day of eating.

I then had to stretch out my pill taking until I finally went to bed around midnight. Boy did that feel good.

It’s now late in the afternoon on Wednesday and I feel as good as I have felt in days. I go back to the Hospital tomorrow for another blood test to see if things are continuing to respond. I feel fortunate in that I was originally scheduled to leave the hospital this Friday if all had gone well. Things continue to fall into place.