karl&myeloma

Today is transplant day -1.

I received my high dose chemo yesterday evening about 6 PM – 358 mg of melphalan, also known as Alkeran. A normal IV dose would be about 29 mg. So you can see why they call it high dose. I also received 10 mg dexamethasone IV to help prevent nausea – fortunately this did not seem to interfere with my sleep. Of course, I also had some diphendramine (Benedryl) IV and ondansetron (Zofran), both also to prevent nausea, and some amitriptaline (for neuropathy).

Considering that this is a hospital with all the attendant ins and outs of staff to take vitals and change infusion bags, I slept quite well. This morning, I also received some oral antibiotics, fluconazole (Diflucan) and levofloxacin (Levaquin), and aprepitant (Emend) for nausea prevention. I guess I’ll have to have a pretty good reason in order to puke with all the anti-nausea drugs 😉! I also received my usual acyclovir (Zovirax) for prevention of shingles, and magnesium sulfate because my magnesium was a little low. The deal with the oral antibiotics is that if my temperature never goes above 100.5 F, I won’t be needing any IV antibiotics like vancomycin. While this something to hope for, apparently it is quite common to need this.

Speaking of numbers, so far my CBC’s are holding up well enough with only small drops since yesterday.

I am really feeling great. I did a mile up and down the hallway of the unit earlier this afternoon. I seem to be thirsty so am drinking a lot of water, which what they want to more quickly flush the melphalan out of my body.

Tomorrow is Day 0 – I get my stem cells back. Come back to papa!

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for my healing.

Amen.