Hope For Jessica Blog

Well I wasn’t going to post today and didn’t yesterday because of technical difficulties to this site.  My brother is really trying hard to fix everything quickly. (Unfortunately, this happened just as he left for China for 3 months!)   UGH!!  Since this is his job I’m afraid his day might have actually been worse than mine!!  Anyway, I thought I go ahead a write just as future reference.

Yesterday, I felt pretty horrible.  Stayed in bed all day with general malaise and nausea.  I truly tested the friendship of Shelli as I almost pucked on her…..OOPS!!:)

Today, feeling a ton better.  Guess I’ll get some IVIG today, which is a med I get regularly with this disease.  It’s basically anitbodies….

Now we start counting up.  The transplant is complete and I hang around the joint waiting for my numbers to go up.  My days are pretty noneventful.  I cruise the halls and watch quite a bit of t.v.

Doc said I’d be neutropenic by the end of the day which basically means that my white cells have all disappeared and I have no immune system.  I had another dose of Rituxan today which is the last of my chemo.

I didn’t have a very good night last night.  I’m very tired, but because of the Rituxan they have to keep coming in to check my vitals, so I’ve given up on trying to sleep for the time being.

Today was the big transfusion day!  They started the transfusion at 1:00 and it was all done by 1:20.  They hung my cells and I was infused much like a blood transfusion. 

It has made me pretty sleepy and the Docs said I will continue to be pretty fatigued as my numbers continue to drop.  Docs said it would take approximately 8-14 days for my cells to graft to the bone marrow.

I asked him if I would be a rock star if I could get them to graft in 5 days and the doc just looked at me and said, “Not going to happen.”  My nurse said I’d still be a rock star if they graffed in 8.

I received many texts wishing me well and sending me prayers that all goes well.  I appreciate the well wishes and feel in my heart that I will get through this with flying colors.

Alas, I was also told that today would be they last of my impromptu picnics with yummy food brought in by my mommy.  Nothing but hospital fare from here on out.  And that my dear reader, is just tragic.

Halleluaja, Halleluaja! I got my catheter out!!!  No more of the high dose Cytoxin, but I do have to have 2 blood transfusions today.  I still have one more dose of Chemotherapy left.  I feel emotionally spent, but still feeling very optimistic and relieved that things are going so well. 

I miss my kids alot.  I’ve been so out of it lately that I haven’t gotten to talk to them as much as I would have liked.

Tanya (another stem cell patient) just checked in yesterday and we’ve gotten to talk.  She is a few days behind me, but she’s so cheerful she helps me stay optimistic and keep the faith.

Wishing I was doing whatever anyone else is doing right now rather that being here.  ANYTHING!!  Being stalked by papparazzi has to be better than this:)

I woke up somewhat alert before they drugged me again.  I walked the hall (only once though.  No marathon for me!)  Doc just told me that this will be the last day of Cytoxin and tomorrow they will remove my foley.  Will still have to do the ATG Rabbit chemo tomorrow. :(  Doing okay.  Not much to say today.  I’m just really tired.

It’s been another drugged up day here at the hospital. Jess is so very sleepy. We’ve put her phone on vibrate so she can rest. She has received many texts and phone calls, but she is so tired that she can’t return all of them right now. She is thinking of everyone and sad that she isn’t up to talking to much right now. We’ve decided that it’s better to be drugged up and sleepy that nauseous. Those who know her, know she HATES to vomit. She looks very cute sleeping with her silky scarf over her head and snuggled under her quilt that Rudy’s mom made for her from her children’s and Rudy’s favorite clothing.

She took a brief cruise around the halls and polished off another smoothy. She watched most of Armageddon with me until she fell asleep again. I’m not good at this blogging business, but I’ll keep you updated on her progress. Good night Shelli out…

This is Shelli. Jess had a rough night last night. She didn’t get to sleep until about 6 this morning. She received quite an arsenal of medications to help with the nausea she was experiencing last night. They hung two more bags of Chemo today and Jess got to sleep all day long. LITERALLY! It’s 10 at night and we just took a cruise around the halls and this is the longest she’s been up all day. Just 3 more days of Chemo and then they will do the transplant of the stem cells.

As a technical/traditional note to the transplant, they count down from day 7 to transplant day on day “0″…Today is day -5.  So far I’ve had two doses of chemotherapy. No real side effects so far except for a little fatigue.  I had to do a HORRIBLE tasting, smelling, gagging fowl breathing treatment yesterday.  Apparently, it causes such bad bronchial spasms they don’t let anyone in the room for an hour after the treatment….this  made me wonder, ”Why the hell am I in here?” :)  It’s to help prevent hospital pneumonia since I’ll be in here so long.  Thank goodness this should only be a three week stay because they have to do it monthly!

So far today, they’ve woke me up to place a foley catheter!  As if mornings weren’t bad enough, being molested without so much as a Starbucks sucks….good times, good times!!  (It’s a special catheter that has several ports to flush the bladder with water and medication to help prevent damage to the lining caused by the chemo flushing through the system)  I’m getting two doses of chemo today.  One is more of an immuno-suppressent type and the other is regular kill all cells type.  My daddy found an article on the internet from the NEW YORK TIMES that said ginger root tablets and capsules have been researched by the cancer society and proven to lessen nausea in chemo patients by 45%!!…I’m banking on this data to be true!  Ginger capsules (check), ginger chewable wafers (check), candied ginger (check), chocolate-covered ginger (check, check)  Whew….I HOPE THIS WORKS!!

My best friend Shelli is coming today to help my mom. She’ll stay for a little over two weeks.  I’m so excited to have her with me and her ability to help out.  It kind of makes me laugh though because she hates hospitals and the sight of blood and needles makes her want to pass out so hopefully mommy won’t be nursing us both!!:)

Hello everyone!  Got back into Chicago yesterday and have been admitted into the hospital today to move forward with the transplant.    I’ve mentioned before that “now we start the hard part” and it has left some of you confused as to why this part is most difficult.   Basically….because they are going to “kill” my immune system.  We do this with high dose chemotherapy daily for seven days.  Unfortunately, during this time, we will kill good cells along with the bad cells.  I may require blood transfusions and platelets to replenish cells that are killed off.  I will be in an isolation type environment due to high risk of infections while I have no immune system.    After the seven days of chemo, we’ll then transplant (by infusion) the healthy stem cells they collected a couple of weeks ago.  Every type of blood cell in the body begins its life as a stem cell or “parent cell.”  The stem cells then divide and form the different cells that make up the blood and immune system.   All the testing in the first two weeks of my stay here at Northwestern has been to make sure my physical self is able to withstand such an intense procedure.  I figure the side effects of the chemo will be the worst part but who knows??  Fatigue is a real issue as it takes awhile for your immune system to “reboot.”

Just started my first dose of chemo this evening.  It’s a drug I’ve had several times in the past…..caused mostly fatigue, which I can handle.  I’ll update you more tomorrow.

BTW….rocking a bald head these days.  It was literaterally “hair today, gone tomorrow!”

Just wanted to drop a note and tell everyone Happy Mothers Day! I’m so happy to have made it home to be with my boys and husband. I’ll be home till the 20th. I don’t know how much blogging I’ll do but I’ll resume on the 21st. I’ll be admitted into the hospital on that day for 3 weeks for the transplant. That’s going to be the rough part. Keep in touch and keep your comments and emails coming, I SO look forward to them.