It's been a long day. It's 10:30pm and our day started at 6am when my alarm went off for us to get up and start getting ready. I let Eric and Brandon sleep a little longer while I showered and got ready. Once I was done, which took a lot less time since I cut my hair on Sunday night. I'll write about that later. It was go go go from the time we woke up. Finishing packing. Checking lists I made several times to make sure we didn't forget anything. Loaded the car up and off we left for Stanford.
We tried to leave by 9am but left at 9:30am. Not too bad really, or so we thought. We hit traffic a little outside of Sacramento that put us about an hour behind schedule. We thought I had an actual appointment at 12:30pm. So, me being the person who always needs to be at least 10-15 minutes early, was freaking out. Finally, when we hit more traffic around Pleasanton I called and found out we had to be there no later than 1pm. Thankfully we knew we could be here by then. When we got here Eric dropped me off at the Cancer Center and I went in to have my labs done and an x-ray of my chest area while he parked the car. After that was over and I met up with him, we went to my appointment with my doctor here. Dr. W is amazing! He also teaches here at Stanford University. So, when he explains what is going on, he explains everything in a way I can actually understand it. It's awesome! During this appointment, he explained that I will need to pick up new prescriptions that he was giving me and that Wednesday I will start with a continuous IV fluids that will go through till we leave on Friday. I will have these fluids with me in a little bag or backpack type thing. He also explained that on Thursday I will be getting an all day chemotherapy to help kill off whatever Myeloma cells are still in my blood. On Friday we will go back to disconnect the IV fluids and also learn how to do the Neupogen injections. That injection will help my stem cells develop faster for the collection of them in about 2 weeks.
After we met with Dr. W, his nurse coordinator, Inna, came in to go over everything in detail. I will write about each day in more detail later. But she did explain each prescription I will be having. There are 12 new prescriptions I am picking up in the morning that I will be starting on Friday when they show us how to do the injection. Dr. W cut the prescriptions I was already taking by about half. That was nice. Of course, we brought everything with with us, so no we have things here we don't need. But, it was a learning experience this trip I think.
Once that appointment was done, we went to a 30 minute class on the care of my central venus catheter. In the class were 2 other couples. Of course, we were the younger ones. We learned how to lay everything out for cleaning, how to clean it, how to make sure we don't use scissors for anything so we don't cut the lines and I don't bleed out, how to clamp the lines, and in the end, flush them. After the instruction, we went through the process then were free to go.
We then headed over to our H.O.M.E. away from home to check in. It's a small one bedroom furnished apartment. The place has a little balcony, is walking distance to the Cancer Center and has a pool we are going to try to get in tomorrow after everything is done. That way I can swim with Brandon before I get my catheter, start the process and have my 100 day period after my transplant. Today though, Eric, Judy, Bill, Brandon, and I headed to Kaiser in Redwood City to drop off my prescriptions and get some dinner. We finally got home around 9pm or so and got organized, settled in and now we are all SO ready for bed as it's after 11pm now.
Thank you everybody for the well wishes, thoughts, prayers, and good vibes. We appreciated everything and just knowing you all are there thinking about us helps get us through this time. Now, we are off to bed as we have to get some sleep for tomorrow. Good Night!!
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