If you noticed in my sig, I've been having a bone marrow transplant. The
long backstory of it all is on my blog, but the short version is my bone marrow is crap and doesn't make anything, I'd been having 3 transfusions a week after being diagnosed out of the blue in November, and a BMT was my only hope for a normal life again. My brother wasn't a match, so they did a worldwide search and found a 9/10 match for me in America. A BMT is 4-6 weeks in hospital: the first week is a super-intense course of chemo (and usually Total Body Irradiation, though I was spared that), then you start on the antirejection drugs, then the next day you get the donor stem cells in an IV (they look like pink guava juice!!) and then you wait & wait & wait for a few weeks until your blood counts start to go up from zero.
So, with that out of the way, I've been
incredibly lucky. The chemo didn't make me nauseous at all, I only really had an itchy rash from one of them, I was spared mouth ulcers, diarrhea, appetite problems, vomiting, fatigue and all the other nasties everyone else gets. The doctors called me "boring" and "their best patient" and visitors remarked how normal I looked (and I felt!) so I thought I might go home a little early, but nothing prepared me for being discharged YESTERDAY! That's 3 weeks to the day from my admission, which is just unheard of! It was so early that my fiance and mom didn't have a chance to get anything done, so I'm locked up in my bedroom today annd tomorrow with the air purifier on high while they disinfect every inch of the boat and the old skanky carpet gets ripped out and new stuff installed, haha
I'm not out of the woods yet, though. Even though my counts are technically in the normal range, my marrow is very brittle and even the slightest infection will make them nosedive so I have to stay out of public places and crowds and public transport and my office for the next 6 months. And yesterday my hair started falling out, too, which was really upsetting because I hoped against hope that maybe I'd be spared it since I'd escaped all the other usual symptoms...
But at least I'm home now so I can rest in my own bed and eat what I like, and the cat clearly
really missed me! I was half afraid I'd smell different and he'd not recognise me, but no problems there!
Any questions I'm happy to answer...
PS: Oddityness's fiance is/was also having a BMT at the same time as me, and he's coming home this week, too!
So she's equally equipped to answer...
