Day -6

I have gained five pounds since being admitted. I believe a large amount of it is water weight, as I'm getting pumped full of more than 2000 mL of saline a day, and I'm getting waterlogged from the inside out. Also, I've been trying to eat a ton just in case I can't eat a bunch later.

The benign hematologist came by to talk to me today - apparently the Factor V Leiden allele that I have doesn't really matter if I have it or if Jeffrey has it - since it's only one of the alleles and not both with the mutation, I'm only 7 times more likely to develop a clot, rather than the 100 times more likely than the normal person with the doubly-mutated allele would be. Birth control pills, which tons and tons of people are on all the time, make you about 5 times more likely to develop a clot, so I'm not much worse off than just a generic person on the pill. Also, according to Dr. Oo (which is the most awesome name I've come across at the hospital - who wouldn't want a vowel sound for a last name?), like 10% of white people have this mutation and most just don't know it, so it's really not as big of a deal as we'd thought. My cousins with the disorder probably have the homogeneous mutation (both chromosomes) and that's why they're on the special diet and drugs and everything. Nice to hear "come by in five months and we'll see what to do from there - don't worry about it" coming from a doctor at a place where everything needs to get done NOW to keep disease at bay.

They're letting me change my dosage to one larger shot a day instead of two small shots, which is nice because it's going to cut in half the amount of stabbing my stomach has to take. When they looked at my old injection sites the nurses were all really impressed that I only had one small bruise from the past week and a half or so - apparently patients giving themselves shots usually results with tons of bad bruising. So another thing getting removed from me to use as a reason why I shouldn't be going into nursing/medicine.

I am not very motivated in the hospital to do work. This may be an issue as my boss is now no longer my boss as of 5 p.m. today. I'm going to try to make myself have the magazine done by Friday. We'll see what happens. I answered emails today and sent along a couple of small things, but spent all morning eating popsicles and all afternoon exercising (read: walking in circles around the floor) and napping, since I kept waking up last night to go to the bathroom from the saline or because Patrick was snoring from being on the uncomfortable Murphy bed.

Day -7

This morning I woke up and immediately felt the backs of my hands for forests of cancerous moles. I had a strange dream, full of really bizarre and unrelated concepts as my dreams are wont to do, but the one major thing I remembered from it was that in it, I had sprouted giant moles on the backs of my hands and I was very panicky about it because if I didn't get rid of them soon, I wouldn't be allowed to be admitted for my transplant and it'd get delayed indefinitely. No matter how much I rubbed or scratched at them, they kept growing until my hands looked almost furry.

Well, when I woke up, my hands were perfectly normal. I saw the PA this morning and once they saw that my counts were holding steady they told me to go home and wait for the admissions desk to call me when my room was ready. I don't remember where we were the last time to wait for the admissions people to call, but this time they were faster than I was and called before I'd even finished packing up my stuff for my month-long stay. It was strange packing knowing that they were waiting on me.

I'm in "pediatrics" again this time, though they're renovating the actual pediatric wing so they really just moved up all the cheery artwork and children's amenities (my room has a Wii AND a PS2) to one of the adult floors. So no pedodome. Also no good kitchen - the "family kitchen" is really just a closet with a fridge and microwave in it.

Chemo starts tomorrow, which means popsicles for breakfast!