10/10/2009 - Last day at the Hospital

I have gone through 2 days of chemo, and will start the next one in a few hours. I thank God for making it easy on my body, and I thank you all for your prayers. So far, I only had mild cases of nausea, but they quickly went away, so no vomiting. I also got some rashes that looked like the beginnings of chicken pox on day 1, but those were also gone by the following morning. I am being given medication to fight off chicken pox just in case the virus wants to come out and party - no party for them this time!

As expected, my blood count went down with every dose of chemo. My white blood cells is down to 1.3 (too low), hemoglobin down to 8.3 (blood transfusion again), and ANC down to 0.9 (neutropenic again). These did not come as a surprise. I will get another pint of blood sometime this afternoon. We just have to wait for the blood to be irradiated and whatever else the blood bank does to make donated blood acceptable to Leukemia patients. I will also get my next dose of chemo at 2pm, then the last one at 2am. Then I'm done! Hurray!

I will have to go to my doctor's office on Monday to get a shot to increase my blood count. It is not Neupogen this time, but another drug that is supposed to last for 2 weeks. By then, my bone marrow should be able to kick in and produce the blood cells my body needs.

Yesterday, a volunteer came to our floor to play the harp for the patients. It was so nice of her to carry that human-sized harp around just to lift our spirits up with music. She reminded me of the harpist in Jack and the Beanstalk. She was pretty with long blond hair, except that she was not strapped to her harp. :-) The music was beautiful. The harpist informed me that I can request for volunteers to come and play music when I am in the hospital. Hmmm...I wonder if Yo Yo Ma volunteers when he is in town...

Another blessing I received the last couple of days was Crisitina's pinakbet. I am not a big fan of the dish, but my best friend prepares it so well I am now a fan of her version of it. She was nice enough to bring me some when she was working the last couple of days. Yum!

Of course, the biggest treat everyday was seeing my family at the end of the day. Even just an hour with them is enough to put a big smile on my face. Tonight will be movie night again! We will have dinner together in my room while watching a dvd. We're looking forward to that. But more than that, we are all looking forward to my going home on Sunday. After being away for 5 weeks last time, our family is closer than ever. We spend a lot more time with each other and do fun stuff together like having Wii matches, letting my kids read to me (my little one is a proud reader now), helping with their homework, and just hanging around each other. We do not to take these moments for granted anymore, so we appreciate them more. I hope other families don't have to go through what we went through to appreciate what they have.

Thank you all once again for your prayers and may God bless you and your family.