SUCCESS!
As of today (Tuesday, September 27) I am officially discharged from the outpatient bone marrow transplant unit!
The last big “hiccup” was on Sunday, when my heart started racing. An EKG showed it was out-of-sync and the doctors thought I might need medication to slow it down and get things back to the correct rhythm. But thanks to IV fluids, prayers, and meditation my heart rate went from 130-ish down to 80-ish in the course of an hour.
Turns out the reason my heart went whacky was because my body was working so hard on rebuilding my immune system. As you can see below, I had 0.1 white blood cell count on Sept 22 (the first red circle), 1.0 two days later, a dramatic increase to 5.2 on Sunday, followed by even more exponential increases of 18.2 and 19.6. Way to go, body!
Because of the heart episode I had to take things really easy yesterday (Monday) and they gave me tons of fluid, potassium, and a blood transfusion. But today during their rounds the doctors said I was done; it was almost a little bit anticlimactic (what, no fireworks?!?). 😂
I sincerely hope to never have to go through anything like this again, but I’m extremely grateful that the option was available.
We’ll stay near the hospital for the next few weeks while the recovery process continues, but we no longer have to report to the AIM clinic at 7:30 every single morning, as we’ve done for the past fifteen days.