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How Long?

Day 14 and I haven’t felt this good at this point in either of the previous games yet I still find myself behind bars, so to speak. I was out for a couple of hours yesterday on a day pass, nothing major but it was good to get out of here and home for a little bit. While I’m definitely not feeling great I am feeling well enough to be home, but once you spike a temp you can count on a 4-5 day visit. A major part of the process of me being admitted and spiking a temp are the famous ‘Cultures’, a real favourite of mine. They are just an extensive blood test which sees them take bottles of blood from two ports on my hickman, I only have two ports, and from one arm. From there the blood is tested and examined to see if and what grows, this can indicate infections. I have had numerous cultures since November and have never grown anything, which is quite common and good and bad. A culture that grows something can, and should to my knowledge, provide more info regarding my high temps, but should I ever grow something from my cultures my Hickman line will have to be replaced, I’m not sure why except that a Hickman is quite often a source of infection itself. So as you can see, there are positives and negatives and more negatives to cultures. As you may also know I’m not a big fan of them and am quite content that I have never produced any results from my samples, so far!

At the beginning of this message I paged my nurses and haven’t heard from them yet, but I am going to ask to see the Doc as I would at least like to have another day pass. Speaking of my nurses, as you know I’m in a different area of the hospital and I feel it is my duty to pass along ‘their’ progress report.

4 South A Progress Report after ~ 60 hours: A few notes first, I have only met the nurses that were on over the past couple of days, thus I can’t give a well rounded evaluation. I was also wanting to do another top 10 but I don’t have enough material yet so I’ll go with what I have. The crew I saw were extremely nice, inquisitive and genuinely interested in my situation and my thoughts, it was comforting to have them ask questions about my progress and things. Of course because they don’t treat Leukemia patients everyday they are a little rusty on some of the procedures, which was fine as I helped them out as best I could. Some nurses were very comfortable asking for help, which I really liked as I can perform virtually every procedure myself, from giving IV med’s to red cells and platelets. I can handle all of that. However to complement this rusty knowledge their is a great level of caution which is a little frustrating as things take longer, such as the time to get blood or med’s, but that is not too big a deal. So you know my location is right next to the nursing station, which seems like a great place to be, as I said it seems like a great place to be, that is if you want to stay awake all night and swap gossip with the “ladies” of 4 South A. They are the loudest bunch of people I have ever heard in my life, I feel fortunate that I am feeling relatively well, as I’m sure if my condition were worse I would have introduced a few of them to the blade of my hockey stick. Everything from practical jokes to regular conversation is louder than anything I ever heard, and I am no real stranger to loud environments. And again complementing this incredible volume is that fact that most every nurse leaves my door open and of course, as mentioned I happen to be located right next to the source of the noise. Anyway I am getting somewhat desensitized to the noise and all in all this new location isn’t too bad, except that I feel like I should be home not in the hospital. Hopefully I will feel like this for another couple of days and I’ll be able to get out of here.

There’s an update on my recent events, you’ll hear from me in the next few days. Forward any thoughts, questions, comments, I’m here and won’t be far from my computer.

More later,

Geoff
#4

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