Back home

I'm finally back home after a two-night stay at Stanford (I was discharged this afternoon). The new chemo that I have been put on has minimal side effects, except for one major one - constipation. In the past this hadn't been a problem, however since I received two doses back to back and since I hadn't been eating anything but liquids the past few weeks it finally caught up to me. When I went in for my appointment on Wednesday it had been about a week since I had a regular bowel movement and my oncologist immediately became concerned. I had been taking some milk of magnesia on a daily basis, but it didn't seem to work and so they had start taking a very strong laxative which was supposed to help out. It generally works after a couple of hours (they refer to it as "liquid dynamite"), but almost 24 hours later it still hadn't worked and I was in complete misery. My stomach was distended to the point of looking about 6-7 months pregnant and I had ongoing cramps that were intolerable. At that point my doctor felt it was best for me to be admitted so that they could give me something stronger and monitor me closely. Once I was admitted I was given some stronger laxatives which bloated me even more and made me feel awful, finally about 48 hours after the whole thing began I was able to go. Today I woke up feeling better, however my stomach is still very much bloated and distended. It will probably be a few days before everything starts working normal again. The main thing now is that I need to continue taking stuff so that it doesn't escalate to this point EVER again. I never knew not being able to use the bathroom could cause so much pain and chaos!

Prior to being discharged I had my blood drawn and my white count is still significantly low and I'm still considered neutropenic. I'm hoping that my counts will start to come up in the next day or two so that I'm able to get chemo on Wednesday as planned. If my counts do not come up, they will probably start me on some Neupogen shots to help increase it.

I'm really glad to finally be back home, the weather today was beautiful and although I didn't really get to enjoy it, I'm hoping tomorrow I'll feel well enough to get out for a little bit.