Day +3

"The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore." Psalm 121:7-8

My Blood Count Today:
Red Blood Count (RBC) 90 (Normal 130-180)
Platelet 37 (Normal 150-50)
White Blood Count (WBC) 0.9 (Normal 4 - 11)

I am feeling well today. There is a significant drop in WBC, from 1.5 yesterday to 0.9 today. In about 2 to 3 days time, the WBC will drops to zero. In order to reduce the immuneless period, a growth factor will be injected under the skin on hand or stomarch on day +5 onwards. This will stimulates the bone marrow to produce white blood cells faster . When the new WBC grows from the donor(my sister) stem cells, these cells will start to attack my body organs. This is called GVHD as we mentioned earlier. A mild GVHD is necessary as it shows that the new immune cells are attacking the cancer cells as well, but severe GVHD is very dangerous. Total absense of GVHD is not very good either as it shows that the new immune cells are not clearing cancerous cells in my body.

I will be receiving second dose of Methotrexate (MTX) today at 4pm today. This is the same that I received on day +1. It is used to killed cancer cells and at the same time to prevent GVHD. I don't like this drug (in fact, I don't like all the drugs), it will cause mouth and throat ulcers. But praise God, the first dose does not give me this ulcers problem. There are two more MTX administration on day +6 and +11.

I want to share with you my mobility (how free I can move around in my room) as a "VIP" in the WAD. Frankly speaking, I am quite heavily "wired". Do you still remember that my body are installed with 5 lumens, 3 on the neck and 2 on the right hand, these lumens are just like electrical sockets on the wall. When necessary, the nurse will plug in a plastic tube to the lumen to infuse drug into my body. Unfortunately, most of the drug have to be infused slowly into the body. Therefore, at least two lumens are always connected to the drugs. These drugs are in turn hanged on a mobile stand - with 5 wheels. In addition to this, for some drug, they have to control very precisely the amount of drug that can infuse into my body in hour. In order to do this, they fix a flow control machine on the mobile stand where the plastic tube passes through and of course this machine has to have electricity supply. So the machine is connected to the electrical socket on the wall through multiple power extension cords so that it is long enough for me to reach everywhere in the room, including the toilet. The summary of my connectivities:

DAVID<-->TUBES<-->MACHINE<-->TUBES<-->DRUGS<-->STAND<-->MULTIPLE EXTENSION CORDS<-->WALL

The conclusion is DAVD<-->WALL: so I am always connected to the wall :-(

So you can imagine how much things I need to carry each time I move around. The worse thing is when I need to visit toilet urgently - always happens due to the drug Lasix. Still remember what it is? It is used to discharge surplus of fluild in my body. With this drug I always need to rush to toilet, and you know in a rush, the electrical wire always get entangled together, the plastic tubes get entangled to the stand and the wheels of the stands get stucked with the electrical wire, which result the mobile stand becomes static stand. Therefore, quite often the urgency is over before I manage to reach the toilet. This is really embrassing but can't be help. The only solution is to stay in the toilet all the time, but who want to do this :-(

I am too hungry to write now, waiting for Richard to bring lunch for me ...

See you next post and May God Bless you all.