DEC 29

Day 7 of 7 on chemo!!! Mary got here at 7:30am and we are having a great visit. I feel pretty much normal today, much better than yesterday! They are giving me antibiotics every 8 hours for the fever and that's working well. Carol brought goodies for the nurses today. She stopped at Black Angus and got potato skins and wings for both shifts. I heard the nurse transfers into this ward have tripled since it happened! If my family keeps bribing the nurses they're liable to never let me go!!!
Since I've been here others have shared experiences that they have had with major illness, and it really helps to know that it's more common than we think. I hardly ever visit the hospital to check it out so I don't hear that way, and some people just don't like talking about it. Thank you for sharing with me, it helps tremendously!!!
Now I need to talk about the hospital!!! Uh, oh, Kaiser, right? I have had excellent care from everyone I've come into contact with, the doctors are not just informative but caring, the nurses and helpers are always friendly and very competent, even the food is good!!! Go figure!!!
Sometime in the afternoon I started getting a fever and chills again and that's uncomfortable but still not too bad. I had to get my dress (gown LOL!) and bed changed about midnight cause everything was soaking wet from sweating (yes, from SWEATING! LOL!). Dana couldn't hug me today because she had cold sores and that was really hard but necessary. She looked pretty cute in the mask tho!!!
I really feel sorry for Deb. She has a lot to do and still comes down every day. She has been supported tremendously by family and I want to thank every one of you for all you are doing! We can't make it without you!
The doctor told us that after today they will try to build my blood up with transfusions and that I'm probably going to give myself more injections of neupogen (spelling?) after 3 or 4 days. The transfusions build the red counts and the neupogen build the white. I don't know what builds the platelets, so if anyone knows please share. I think I'm getting to learn this stuff and then my mind goes blank! (I don't think that's the chemo, it's just being 54!) You diabetics that give yourselves injections I salute you!!! My grandpa had to have injections and it's just one of the many things you don't appreciate about people when you're a kid.

Some of you have had trouble leaving comments or going to my yahoo email so if that's the case you can easily email me at:
buf481@aol.com

I've remembered some things that I left out of certain days so let me digress a bit.

1) The reason we had blood tests taken in the first place was that I went to my dermatology appt. a week earlier and my doctor said my liver felt a bit enlarged so she wanted the tests done.
2) The first day I got to the hospital and had my Hickman catheter installed, Deb had left at about 10:00pm and I asked her to call me when she got home. I still hadn't heard from her at 11:30 when they took me and was worried and she had taken my cel phone and you can only make local calls from the room. When I got to the OR, Jeff the anesthesiologist started talking to me and being very nice. When he saw that I was upset he asked me why and I told him that I was worried about my wife. He told me that the hospital cut off all incoming calls to the rooms at 9pm so she wouldn't have gotten thru anyway. He asked me what her number was, took out his cel phone and called her for me. What a great comfort that was for me, thank you sooooo much, Jeff!!!!

I think I'll end for now but one of the things I've been worried about is the future. Not for me, I know for sure even if I die that I'll spend eternity in heaven with God, but its for others who haven't given their lives to God I am afraid! Someone gave me an example of eternity recently and it goes like this. Picture an ant and a ball of string 93 million miles long. Watch the ant in your mind travel to the beach and pick up one grain of sand. Now picture the ball of string stretched tight between the earth and the sun. The ant takes the grain up the string to the sun, comes back empty handed and repeats it with another grain of sand. (OK, you also have to picture that the sun won't burn the ant, etc. LOL!) When the ant gets finished taking every grain of sand on earth to the sun, eternity will have just begun. That's a long time to spend in a terrible place, but not so long in a good one, no?