Steve had a fairly good night. He was woken up too many times for his liking, but other than that he was feeling ok through the night. We got up around 7:30 and had breakfast. A nurse came in shortly after that to draw blood to double check his blood type "in case a blood transfusion is needed". This alarmed us a bit because we have done this treatment cycle twice and no one ever came in to check his blood type, nor mentioned blood transfusion. We waited for Dr. Kim to make his rounds (this is Steve's doctor, he happens to be on rounds this week....yay!). Dr. Kim said all of Steve's blood work looked fine. We questioned the nurse taking his blood and double checking his blood type in case of transfusion. Dr. Kim said that as Steve gets further along in the treatment cycles that chance of a blood transfusion increases. The medicine will eventually start killing his bone marrow and it may not be able to reproduce red blood cells fast enough and so he "may" in the future need a transfusion, but as of now everything looks fine. That relieved us! Another "first" happened today. Physical therapy came in. They started asking questions about Steve's mobility at home. Whether we had a cane? a walker? a wheelchair? stairs? what kind of tub/shower? Again, this kind of freaked us out. They never came by and asked us this stuff before nor have they done any "physical therapy". We asked the physical therapist why they were suddenly doing this, was something wrong? She said, no. She said that someone should come by every cycle that he is in the hospital. So, apparently that just slipped through the cracks the first 2 times. No biggie. Steve hasn't lost his mobility at all. He is still able to get around at home just fine, and he is able to get around just fine in the room while he is on treatment also. Nonetheless, it was a weird start to the morning.
Steve actually felt pretty decent most of the day. He watched some TV, did some work stuff on his laptop, made some work phone calls, and took a walk around the nurses station. About 4:00 pm he got hit with a bad case of the chills. He again tried to say no to the Demerol, but after a few minutes of shivering to the bone chills and his nurse and me telling him to quit trying to fight the meds, he took the Demerol. I will save the "funnies" from the Demerol this time as they are rated PG-13. Haha. Within seconds of the Demerol the chills were gone and he went to sleep. Then he woke up around 7:30 pm feeling REALLY bad. He asked me to check his heart rate (there is an app for that!) and it was over 132. Shortly after that, a tech came in to take his vitals. He had 102 temp, 134 HR, and 140/96 blood pressure. He was absolutely miserable. The nurse gave him some Tylenol and about 45 min to an hour later the fever broke. He feels so much better now. He ate a couple of bites of some sugar free chocolate pudding for dinner and now is watching some TV. They are changing the cable from analog to digital here at MDA and are apparently having some issues, because most of the channels don't work. Luckily they have free on demand movies and that is what he is watching. I think he watched Moneyball earlier and now he is watching Fast Five.
Overall, it was a decent day. I finished The Hunger Games and started on Catching Fire. Steve had a rough time for about 4 hours (4-8pm), but nothing that isn't expected. Expected or not, it just stinks!!! Hopefully he feels ok through the night and is able to get some rest, and hopefully tomorrow he doesn't get the chills/fever/etc. If things go like the last 2 cycles, I expect him to sleep about 95% of the day tomorrow. That's really not a bad thing, because I sure hate to see him miserable. I would rather him just sleep through it all!
Watching TV while I blog <3
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