Back in buisness

Sorry everyone for falling off the face of the earth for a while...

let's recap:
I got out of the hospital after being there for only 25 days total (who knew travy's stem cells were such over achievers?) on Friday the 7th. Though I was ready to be done with getting woken up throughout the night and being back at home, I was definitely not jumping out of bed that day. I was feeling low of energy and not in the best of moods considering I was leaving the hospital. I got home and for the next two days I pretty much didn't move from my spot on the couch. My mouth sores had gone away but I had no appetite and if I did eat anything I threw it right back up. So it wasn't easy coming home. Luckily my nausea didn't stay with me very long so keeping food down wasn't a problem anymore...eating it was. When I got chemotherapy it proceeded to wipe out all of my taste buds. If I showed you my tongue it would look very smooth...because I have no taste buds! So even though I could hold food down eating it was a whole other chore to do! First everything I ate tasted like cardboard. I stil didnt have much of an appetite so it was really easy for me to take a bite of food and say "all done". Next, everything just tasted horrible. No matter what I ate I just tasted sour disgusting food and after one bite I would say "all done". It sucked because my dad was here and he made all his delicious food that normally was really good but currently no bueno for my taste buds. So for days and days I was maybe eating 300 calories a day...not good :/ In the hospital I managed to keep my weight at a good 118 lbs. With the mouth sores the previous week preventing me from eating much and then my taste buds keeping me from eating I quickly dropped down to 110 lbs. My energy was low and soon my blood pressure started to drop off.

Once I was out of the hospital I was scheduled to go right back into the clinic the next week and do blood draws and 1.5L over 3 1/2 hours of magnesium sulfate. So lucky me, i get to leave the hospital just to come back and spend half my day here. We get to the clinic around 8 and I usually start my fluids around 9 or 10 am. I then lay in bed for the 3 1/2 hours and sleep, watch movies or...space out. I have done this everyday since being out of the hospital save for this past weekend where they let us take the fluids home and do them there. I need all of this fluid because the prograft drug I take is hard on the kidneys and decreases my magnesium a lot. I will need to do this for the majority of my 100 days while I am taking the prograft drug (tacrolimus). Hopefully I will only have to come into the hospital on mondays, wednesdays and fridays and have the rest of the days at home to do fluids...that would be much nicer to do!

So back to my blood pressure. The nurses always take my vitals every morning and since I've been out of the hospital I noticed that I am out of breath just standing up, let alone walking around. I get very lightheaded when I sit up and stand up but luckily I never got too dizzy and felt like falling. As I got my blood pressure taken I noticed that everyday it was going down....90/60...84/55...80/50...92/66...then 73/40. 73/40?!!? If you don't understand what that means a normal blood pressure is 120/80. 73/40 is NOWHERE near that AT ALL. I was surprised I was still walking around! (The nurse had to hold my arm and walk me back because they don't want me to "drop" as they say here) So that was most likely caused from not drinking a gallon of water a day. It is hard to be drinking water or the likes constantly all day. If I didn't get rid of my cancer yet I'll just drown it in fluids. I got prescribed blood pressure medicine (yay more medicine to take with the handful that I'm taking already) and it seems to be helping already. I hit the 100's yesterday!

This past weekend I started to eat more and get more of my appetite back. I think eating (or lack there of) really affected my blood pressure too...so I'm happy to be eating again. Things still taste a little weird but it's manageable. I am up to 114 lbs which was gained from eating sugary snack foods that I would normally never eat but I have to now to gain weight. Cassidy told me "just eat everything you tell me not to eat". Haha. It is really hard for me to do that! I don't know how people eat this stuff everyday! It's hard cause I don't snack a lot and eat only when I'm hungry or remember to eat...so I am trying to train myself to eat throughout the day. :\ gotta keep trying

anyways, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive and doing well. otherthan the blood pressure I have been doing great with my recovery; no fevers, no rashes, no nausea! I will update more often now that I finally have some energy and motivation back in me. I hope you all are doing well and keep in touch!

-sav