Day t-2

The first night of my hospital is behind me. Yesterday in anticipation of my high dose Melphalan, I started sucking on ice. The chemo was administered through my central line for about fifteen minutes, and then I continued to suck ice for two hours. Eventually, my teeth stopped hurting, and my lips and mouth were numb. I chewed ice to numb up my esophagus and have some bite marks on my cheeks. I asked my nurse how many ice cups the typical patient would make it through, and she said the average was three. Then I asked what’s the most, then she said four. Obviously I said I was going to get through five cups so I could break the record.

At around 8:15 last night, I stopped chewing ice, and I think I made it through about 3.5.-3.75 cups. Hopefully that was enough to prevent painful mouth and esophageal sores. The ice decreases blood flow, which limits the chemo’s contact to the soft tissue in the mouth, which it would kill off, like the rest of the GI tract, the bone marrow, myeloma, and other fast growing cells. The nurse said that the folks who don’t take the ice seriously usually end up on those pain pump thingies.

The little brown bag hanging on the IV stand is a shield around a smaller bag of my chemo.

The ice has been the worst of the treatment so far. I was given dexamethasone, the strong steroid I’ve complained about since starting it in May, pretty much squashed any hope for a good night sleep. I dozed off around 12am, woke up groggy at 1am to flip my soggy-from-the-night-sweat pillow, and then up again a final time at 3am. I’ll be taking decreasing amounts of dex for only a few days so I should sleeping better(?) soon.

The only other notable tidbit from my first day is that I’m already anemic and have low platelets. It would appear that this due to the G-shots I took in preparation for the stem cell harvest. They encouraged the production of certain processes that produce certain white blood cells over those that produce red blood cells or platelets. Moreover, I did lose some platelets (or platelet producing cells, which are large) and red blood cells during apheresis on Monday so that could contribute to my pre-chemo numbers. Certainly they will get lower as the days progress.

Waking up early did have some benefits. I was able to do some dry point etching, shower, and get the morning underway before people start knocking on my door.