Stir Crazy

Four days in, I figured I’d give y’all an update. As you can see, the view outside my room is spectacular. If this were a condo instead of a hospital room, I’m sure it would bring top dollar. Across the street from the Tower where I am, there’s a helipad on top of the main hospital, so several times a day a helicopter hovers and lands. It’s cool to look down on a helicopter while it’s landing. Highly recommend.

I’ve had three dose of the chemo that’s not the scary one. That one will be tomorrow night. I will have to keep ice in my mouth the whole time. Some lovely friends are bringing me in popsicles so yeah me.

I’m dropping weight every day. Some I’m sure is the chemo, but I just don’t have an appetite. It’s sort of weird.

The nurses, with the exception of one, have all been very nice. One older lady was a bit of a scold at first, but she turned out to be competent and pleasant overall. She helped me cover up my central line so I could take a shower, which felt great. The night nurse for the last two nights will terrorize my dreams. The first time she was hooking up the chemo I was traumatized because it appeared that she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. I brought this up with my day nurse yesterday, but due to staffing she was also my nurse last night. Last night was a little less terrifying. I think she got a good talking to. She wasn’t all that pleasant, but she fumbled less.

I started on the anti-GVHD medication today. Graft Versus Host Disease is when the new stem cells attack the old cells-basically there’s a turf war for my body. GVHD can manifest in a number of ways-predominantly rashes, but it can impact different parts of the body as well. There’s acute GVHD and chronic GVHD. I’m really afraid of the concept of chronic GVHD-it sounds as awful as long COVID.

GvHD happens when particular types of white blood cell (T cells) in the donated stem cells or bone marrow attack your own body cells hence the turf war. This is because the donated cells (the graft) see your body cells (the host) as foreign and attack them. Normally T cells don’t attack our own body cells, because they recognize proteins on the cells called HLA (human leukocyte antigens). We inherit our HLA from our parents. Apart from identical twins, HLA is unique to each person.

Luckily my donor’s HLA markers were a near perfect fit with mine. After a transplant the bone marrow starts making new blood cells from the donor stem cells. These new blood cells have the donor’s HLA pattern. They recognize the HLA pattern on existing body cells as different (foreign) and may begin to attack some of them.

It’s a four-hour IV drip of a drug called Prograf twice a day at the beginning. I’m gonna get real good at walking around with my IV pole. This concludes the biology lecture portion of today’s entry. Thanks for checking in.