CVC, Hospital Check In, & First Day of Chemo

All went well. The CVC insertion went well Friday morning, especially since they use an ultrasound machine to locate the vein rather than just "taking a stab at it" - literally.

I checked in the hospital Saturday evening and bedded down for a night of not much sleep. The nurses check your vital signs every 4 hours. So between that and trying to get comfortable on a narrow hospital bed, sleep was not easy to come by.

The first day of pre-tansplant chemo on Sunday was uneventful. Plenty of Benadryl in the IV kept me a little groggy most of the day. But that's okay. We'll do the same thing Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday I have the day "off" - just confined to the 11th floor.

They encourage you to get some excercise which consists of rolling your IV tree around the four pods of 13 rooms on the 11th floor. I made 10 trips around the whole floor today. I was told that 5 trips around the whole floor is the equivalent of a mile of walking. I sort of doubt it, so I will count my steps tomorrow and calculate the distance assuming my stride is 3 feet. With several people on this "jogging path" it got a little crowded a few times.

On Thursday I will get a big bag of Rituxan. And then on Friday I am scheduled to get the stem cells.

For about a week after receiving the stem cells, apparently, I won't be too energetic. The chemo will have wiped out much of my immune system, so all my blood counts will be very low if not non-existent. The new cells will have to find a home in my bone marrow, start fighting the disease, and start to finish off what is left of my own immune system. They'll be busy little boogers.

When the transplanted cells begin to engraft and the blood counts come up to a certain level, they discharge you from the hospital out to where you are staying locally for the next 100 days. It will take anywhere from 10 days to several weeks post transplant for the blood counts to come up. I'm hoping for the 10 day duration.