Flying

So I know it has been longer than I typically post between blogs, but it’s been an exciting couple of weeks.  The Easter Bunny had lots to bring me and like the Easter Bunny it was both up and down.

I still struggle with strength and my doctor has determined that we are going to switch from doing infusions every week to 2 weeks on and 1 week off so that I can start recovering in between.  YAY.  That made me so happy.  So on the 7th I had my scheduled infusion which went well and on the 8th I had my scheduled MRI to see how effective the 2 weeks of whole brain radiation had been back in February.  By the 8th I was so tired, I didn’t sleep well in the hotel, the bed was hurting my back, the Imaging office wasn’t doing a good job getting my IV in even though I had a port and they should’ve just put the IV into my port, they finally got it in (in my port) but it was exhausting me and I finally just fell asleep.  When it was all done they said I could just stay in the scrubs I switched into and my sister in law who dropped me off they would just wheel me out to her car.  I slept the whole way home and don’t remember the drive at all.  When I got home I don’t remember anything.  I tried getting out of the car and fell (I’m told), my brother in law and Brent had to help me into the house.  They couldn’t get me to respond and Brent made the decision that he needed to call emergency. So I got to go on my first ever life flight – granted I don’t remember it.  I do remember a dream with bright flashing lights, but I don’t remember the flight itself.  I joke that a friend of mine who is also having a bad medical year got a flight because he had a stroke, I was just super jealous so I wanted a flight too, but he can remember his, mine I woke up in the hospital with people asking me if I knew where I was and what date it was (I don’t even know what date it is today).  So I got to spend 5 nights in another hospital.  Seems to be my status quo.

I got home though and Brent and I spent the next 3 days sleeping after a very long 5 days.  But what must go down does bounce up at least.  We got a pass this week on doing my infusion and were able to stay home.  We had planned on meeting with my radiologist so I could hear about my MRI results that I had right before entering the hospital, and he allowed us to do that virtually.  I  was nervous about what I would hear.  I didn’t expect all the lesions to go away but I was nervous that there would be no change or worse yet that there would be expansion.  Fortunately the lesions all shrunk in size, and that is exactly what my doctor had expected and hoped for.  Whew!!!!! So we will do another scan in 8 weeks (hopefully it won’t end in a trip to the hospital), and determine next steps.

So it’s been quite a couple of weeks.  I had predicted that I would end up in the hospital if I kept at the pace I was going and unfortunately that happened.  My numbers (red blood cell count and platelet count) were half what they should be.  Which were causing me to be weak and unable to stay conscious, walk more than a few feet, or catch my breath.  But I am now hoping a couple weeks off will show a rebound in those numbers.

Here’s to a week of flying high but not in a helicopter.