Day +12

I'll start with the good news:

No blood products or magnesium supplements needed this morning. I slept pretty much all night, only briefly waking up for labs, meds, vitals. Although my temperature has slowly crept up, I have not (yet) been over 100.4, so no invasive workups for infection yet.

That's about it.

My mouth is even more covered with white patches/sores than it was, and it continues to reach further down my throat. Even swallowing saliva hurts so they have given me a personal suction device kind of like at the dentist. Due to the sores in my mouth I produce a lot of thick mucusy saliva which burns if I swallow it.

I woke up hungry and ordered eggs, but putting any solid food in my mouth was excruciating, so I quickly stopped that. I was able to force down most of a protein shake for breakfast, though it hurt.

After talking to my nurses, the PA and Dr. Chhabra, I've decided to try to let my body rest as best as it can. That means that all of the oral meds that can be taken via IV will be switched to IV, I'll switch to IV pain control (not excited about the narcotics), and I am able to take a break from eating. Dr. Chhabra said even a few days of not eating is fine--if it gets longer than a few days, they'll consider IV nutrition.

All sorts of things that I wanted to avoid are in my present and future. It makes me very sad, but the staff assures me that most people hit this phase, especially with the particular myeloablative regimen that I had.

It's tough, but I can do this. It's much harder to be doing it without a defined end date, but that's how this goes. I've been told that I will "know" that my neutrophils are coming up even before my test results show it, because my throat will hurt less. That sounds good to me. One day closer.

It was a yucky rainy day and when Greg swapped clothes today,
I could only see him waving from the car.