When It Rains, It Pours

When I was still hopeful in the day.

The past few days have been disappointing in that I had to travel over an hour to my hospital to get my blood test, be told my white blood cell count was still too low, & then be forced to head back home. Well today took the cake. I was finally ready to get my stem cells collected. First of all I didn't sleep enough last night, and I arrived to my appointment late due to one of the worst cases of train traffic I've experienced. The nurses didnt seem to mind & got me connected to the machine. My fingers and face got tingly at one point, it didn't feel too nice. They gave me tums to help the side effect and they later injected Heparin into my lines too. It took about 4 boring hours. The nurses told me initially that my blood work didn't seem very promising of stem cells so I may have to take a new injection that had to be administered in the hospital at 5pm later in the day if the amount of stem cells they collected was very low which they already anticipated. This new plan was not on my agenda, so unfortunately my husband & I were forced to stay by the hospital after my stem cell collection ended around 1:30pm. As is routine, the nurses told me they would call me later and let me know how many stem cells were able to be collected today. I need to collect 5 million.

My husband and I went for lunch & walked around the city bored for a long while. We thought coming back to the hospital early to get my injection would help us get things done faster but we were told it had to be given at earliest 4:30pm. On top of that I was told my insurance was bringing difficulties since it is an expensive drug so my main nurse was trying to get the ok from higher ups while we waited. As we waited I was dealing with another personal issue that I had going on today regarding paperwork with my father that I found out didn't happen as I had planned. I was losing patience, I was upset, and then the call came about the stem cells. "ZERO" Yup Z-E-R-O. I broke down and started crying right there. I was hysterical. I didn't even think collecting ZERO stem cells after four hours was possible. I thought something was wrong with me. I expected my stem cell count to be low but geeze, not zero. My husband quickly calmed me down and helped me understand things better. He reminded me that the nurses did explain I may have to keep returning for days until I was "stem cell" ready. I guess I just forgot & was confused about what they meant. I was mentally exhausted, spent, & over stressed today. Thankfully, shortly after they gave me my shot and I went home, but it was a LONG ASS day.

On the bright side: I wasn't very nauseous today. I'm feeling better but my new pain is all over body tenderness to the touch due to my daily neupogen shots. Oh and you won't believe what a "beautiful" FAIL my husband did on me today. I will post the "beauty" tomorrow. I need to sleep.