03/18/2013: My Wife’s Birthday! Happy Birthday Dee!
8:00: I wake up, get up out of bed, let buster out, and change and get ready to go to Tulane.
8:10: I take my blood sugar, 135.
8:15: I jump in my Parent’s CRV, since I have to get a new breaktag for my van, and my battery is currently dead from not using my van for at least 4 weeks, and drive to Tulane.
8:23: I hit the traffic around the bend by the pumping station after the I-10/610 split. I move over one lane so I can hit the Tulane/Airline Exit.
8:30: I get to Tulane, park in the Saratoga garage and take the elevators down to the cancer center.
8:40: I check in, sign some paper work and get my wrist band.
9:00: I am called to the back.
9:10: I am weighed, 253.6, and they also take my vitals and temp, all good there.
9:15: I am shown to my room. I ask the nurse if they are going to be doing a vaynco trough on me today as well since the home health nurse couldn’t do a vaynco trough on Sunday because Quest Diagnostics is closed on that day. They said they would make some calls.
9:20: The PA comes in and writes a order for a vaynco trough, so we are good to go, the nurse comes in and takes 3 vials of blood from my already accessed port.
9:30: Now it is just time to sit here and wait for the test results.
10:00: Melissa drops in and gives me a new calendar. It is updated to show the days that my stem cells were collected and it also shows the 3 cycles of Brentuximab that I am getting, one being this past Friday, the next 3 weeks from that Friday and the last three weeks from that Friday. It also has 2 appointments that I have to schedule with Dr. Safah the Tuesdays before those Fridays that I get my chemos.
10:15: The nurse comes in to check on me and tells me that I will be getting some Saline and some Magnesium since it appears that I am a little bit dehydrated and my Magnesium levels are running low.
10:30: The PA stops in again and gives me an update that I should stop administering to myself the Vaynco because my trough levels are high and the cultures came back negative, so no need to keep up with the Vaynco.
11:10: The nurse comes back in with the 1000 ml bag of Saline and Magnesium mixed. She tells me that I will get this over the course of 2 hours at 500 ml per hour.
11:20: The fluids start pumping in to me, so 2 hours of pumping to go…
11:30: I start catching up on my blog. I start with today and will work my way backwards so that everyone is up to date, since I have people asking me how I am doing and getting worried because I am not updating my blog as often as I used to. I need to get back into that habbit. Oh well. On to yesterday’s update!
1:30: The fluids finish up. The nurse unhooks the tubing and flushes my port and hepranizes it. Melissa told me to ask the nurse to call her when I was done so that she could go over everything with me about discontinuing the vaynco etc.
2:35: Melissa still hasn’t shown up, I have a few things I have to go do so I tell the nurse just to have Melissa call me.
2:45: I get to the CRV, and head out down Canal St. to get to the Interstate. I have to go pick up my mom from the Hospital that she works at and bring her home since I am borrowing their car.
3:00: I get to the hospital and my mom is waiting outside, so I pick her up and bring her home.
3:10: We get home, now I gotta run out and pick up my wife from school at Delgado.
3:25: I get to Delgado and pull into the parking lot and call her phone with no answer.
3:35: My wife calls me back she is just getting out of an Midterm Exam that she was taking.
3:40: My wife and I head back home.
4:00: We are home. Time for my wife to decide what we are all going to do for her birthday, either my mom is going to cook her favorite food, or we can go out to eat. I haven’t been out to eat in a number of months now… She decides she wants to go out to eat and enjoy a steak. I name a few places and she chooses Outback Steak House. However we wait around for her lawyer to call for a possible rent a car after her accident about 2 and a half weeks ago.
4:30: We all doze off and take a nap. I am exhausted as well.
6:30: We decide its time to go out to eat.
7:00: We get to Outback. It’s not too crowded and we are seated almost right away. I get the full slab of Baby Back Ribs, a free Bloomin’ Onion for the table since their nascar drive finished in the top 10, and a spinach artichoke dip for the table. The food is great as always. My wife orders a cheesecake and she gets a birthday scoop of ice-cream both covered in chocolate syrup. I get a taste of each, both are very good and rich.
8:30: We head on home.
9:00: I text my home health nurse seeing if she needs the port accessed any longer since they said I do not need to do another culture or any more blood work since they are taking me off the vaynco. She says as long as she doesn’t have to pull any more blood, then I can deaccess it. She says she will see me later in the week to discharge me.
9:30: I start working on deaccessing the port. I take off the square adhesive patch that holds the needle in. I then grab hold of the needle, and with my other hand hold the port down under my skin, and pull the needle out. At least pulling the needle out does not hurt at all!
10:00: I get things together and get a bath one last time. Tomorrow I will get a shower!
11:15: Out of the bath and into bed!
11:45: I am out. ZzZzZzZz…
11:59: Another day gone!
