Three Long Weeks

Just as I expected, the bone marrow biopsy was a horrific experience. The resident that did it was very nice, but I think I’m just exceptionally hard to get bone marrow out of. I was even given two small doses of morphine right before and it didn’t do a thing, except make me sick to my stomach later that day. The oncology team was going to go get the results yesterday, so I may receive some answers today during rounds.

The CT that I had done that same morning appears to be worse. The chest x-ray that I had done showed improvement in the mucus amount after having the last bronchoscope, but now it appears that things are back to being plugged again. They still don’t believe it’s progressive disease, however they will probably need to do a lung biopsy to confirm. The pulmonary team is contemplating whether to do one. Meanwhile, they will be trying some additional respiratory treatments that are used on patients with cystic fibrosis to see if it will help. Nobody really knows what to do at this point since they haven’t really seen anything like this before.

Regardless of everything going on with my lungs, my doctor is ready to start chemo. I will be on a weekly regimen of Taxol starting probably tomorrow. They want me to get my new Hickman first for the infusion. I’m scheduled to have that inserted later today. Just when I’m getting over the soreness of getting the old one out, now I’m going to be sore again from the new one. I can’t complain though, anything is better than more IV’s. I had another one put in just a few hours ago, since my other one stopped working.

Tomorrow will be exactly 3 weeks since I was admitted. It’s unbelievable to think that I’ve been here this long and away from my own bed. I can’t think of a 24-hour period where I’ve gotten more than 4 hours of sleep. My body is so drained/exhausted/weak. Walking is becoming such an effort, not just from a breathing perspective, but from my legs/knees being so weak.

No word yet on getting my own room. Fortunately my roommate is not too bad, she just tends to talk A LOT, which exhausts me.