Day 22

It looks like we have settled into a routine after getting out of the hospital. Every day I go to the 2nd floor blood lab early in the morning for them to draw blood for testing. They draw 3 to 5 vials of blood every day. I then go to the ATC (ambulatory treatment center) on the 10th floor. They also have 3 ATC centers on the 2nd floor, but the 10th floor center is primarily just for BMT patients.

At the ATC they hook me up to an IV and give me magnesium sulfate and phoscarnet, which is an anti viral medicine. Every Friday I also get immunoglobulin. This process takes about 4 or 5 hours, so I get out between 1 and 2 every afternoon depending on when they get me in there to start. This is a 7 day a week event for the first 2 weeks or so.

After the first 2 weeks they begin to transition you to oral medications, especially the magnesium. The anti rejection medication strips the magnesium out of you so they have to put it back in. After next week I should be on a 3 day a week schedule. The only problem with the magnesium sulfate pills is that they mess up your stomach a little.

The red blood counts continue to be pretty stable and trending up. The white counts are like a yo-yo. They were way down this morning to 1.1, so I got another Neupogen shot this morning to boost them back up. This is pretty normal, though.

So, medically, things are a little boring right now. But that's exactly the way I want them. If you are not boring to the medical staff then you have problems. And I don't want problems, so boring is good. My goal is to be the most boring patient they have.