Sheesh!

Wow, so, not that anyone's terribly upset about it, I'm sure, but I apologize for not writing anything the past few days. Lots and nothing really has happened. Let's see. Today is Saturday. Upon completion of my previous post, I was mostly just chilling in my room, awaiting the biopsy results. Well, those results are in: I am in complete remission. My marrow went from being stuffed with leukemia cells to being virtually empty. Hoo-rah. Now everything else I go through is just to make sure they're completely gone and stay gone. Okay. Thursday morning, I got my first neutropenic fever; my first fever having no white blood cells. (You are "neutropenic" when you have no white blood cells, essentially no immune system). It was a very low-grade fever, barely high enough to be considered as such, but my doctors started me on antibiotics anyway. During the day Thursday, I had visitors! A friend of mine from highschool dropped by, and it was freaking awesome to see him. And then my brother dropped by for 20 minutes with two of his college friends. That was interesting. They seem like good folk, if a little bit nuts. But it's my brother, so I would expect as much. I think they like him anyway, so that's good.

Following my visits with people, I got sick. Like, no, really. My fever came back with a vengeance, and I started getting the chills like no other. I could not stop shaking. It was one of the worst feelings of my life. And I survived Hurricane Katrina. (too soon?) But yeah. So the nurses gave me two different drugs that made me stop shaking, and they covered me in hotpacks and blankets. After a few hours, the chills went away, and I was relatively back to normal. Yesterday, however, I pretty much just lay in bed all day. I wasn't too keen on moving. Also, in the morning, I had tried to shower, but I started feeling really nauseous after standing up for too long, and I actually did throw up. Yes, yes, I know. Pleasant. But so I went and stayed in bed.
bored yet?
So last night: I didn't really get to sleep much. I was told to stop eating and drinking anything at 8 pm, because I was to go for another CT scan later on that night. At midnight, the doctors had me drink a liter of apple juice mixed with this contrast liquid that pretty much just makes your stomach show up on the CT scan. (Oh, that's the other thing: I've been having a lot of stomach issues these past few days. awesome.) So, I drank the liter of juice, and then waited 2 hours for Transportation to finally come pick me up around 3 am for my CT scan. They shot dye through my IV, which helps my organs show up on the screen. It's actually really amazing what those things do. I don't know how they work at all, but they pretty much take cross-section photographs of your insides. It's sweet. So those results came in this morning, and they said everything was normal but for one thing. Warning - the next few lines are pretty gross. My doctor showed me the images this morning, and he said everything looked normal except for my intestine. Basically, my entire intestine, both long and short sides, is packed with, well, poop. They call them stools. I like poot. Symantics. So, that explains why my stomach hurts like a mofo. My doctor also just came in and told me I'm severely dehydrated, which sucks, but they've put me on an IV hydration solution, and they're going to be starting me on a pretty heavy-duty laxative. Today's going to be one hell of a day on my body, but hopefully by the end of it I should be feeling better. The other thing is, I'm not sure how much of this could have been avoided either. I mean, they're pumping me full of drugs. My appetite's been crap, as has my desire to drink anything. I think what I'm going through is fairly normal. It just sucks for now.

Otherwise, that's the update. My apologies for its being rather long. I tend to revel in verbosity. Oh, and just because I know some people are sitting at home with nothing better to do than wonder about possible doctor-patient intrigue situations, I did get a new in-house doctor. He's relatively youngish as well, and he's really nice. He's working on getting a few key websites unblocked for me, and he also said he'd bring me the movie Rushmore later on. So that's exciting. I've got a friend. Construe that how you will, you. okay, I'm finished. Pax and poot!