First of all the needles that have been poked in me countless times. You all remember my first bloodwork with the oncologist and the 16 vials of blood they took out of me. Well at least after that there has been always a minimum of two. Multiply that by 150 and there you have 300 vials of blood extracted for bloodwork. While staying overnight for up to 4 days at the hospital every morning at 6am the nurse would wake you up to take blood. Then if I needed transfusions while in the hospital there was more bloodwork to check the hemoglobin.
Now my temperature use to fluctuate wildly so while getting a transfusion they always check your blood pressure before starting, ten minutes into the transfusion, then at the end. It was the same ritual for every pint. The same time they would check my temperature. I would sometimes go up and down. When it went high they would I call panic on the side of caution and take a blood culture to check for anything amiss. This was blood taken out of each arm to fill two more vials. The three bone marrow biopsies I had is when they stick a big needle right in the hip bone area to extract bone marrow. That hurts like hell! The two liver biopsies I had they insert this huge needle in the liver area a couple of times to freeze it before extracting what they need for study. When I was staying in the hospital the needle I hated most they would just stick in my abdomen. That unlike any other lingered for at least 5 minutes afterwards. They gave me that to prevent blood clots. Man I hated that one. Then for I think it was a abdominal CT scan a needle was used to inject fluid in my veins while they took pictures. I thought my veins were going to burst. Same for my Liver MRI. Needles, needles, needles. Of course to remove the iron which I will continue Friday I had a needle like pincer inserted in fatty part of my abdomen for 2-3 days continuously until contraption I was wearing was replaced by another.
My temperature use to drop sometimes quite a lot. There were 2-3 occasions when not even a hot shower would even warm me up so I would climb into bed with my teeth chattering and my wife would throw like 5 bedspreads on top and give me a hot flannel to rest on my forehead. Curled up under the covers finally my body temperature would rise and a crisis was averted.
On the other hand I use to get the sweats pretty bad. On most nights I was ready for bed at 9pm so I would just say good night to everyone. Off to bed I went where as soon as my head hit the pillow off to sleep I was gone. Then I would wake up. My pillow was soaked, hair wet, pyjamas drenched, my whole body was prespiring, the duvet was damp, sheets were all wet like they only got half dry after being in a wash. Everything was totally not dry. I’d look around and all the lights were on as they were, checked the time and it was only 9:30! Unbelievable!
Grabbing a towel to dry myself off I went downstairs to tell the wife what just happened. We just shook our heads because that was the way things were while we were waiting on a proper diagnosis and treatment.
Right now I am much better than those days but my chemo as you will learn about after has left my toes with no feeling. Just feel cold all the time. My feet swell a lot too.
I am 50% through my journey of experiences. I will finish retelling them in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading.
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