Well again I first need to apologize for being so absent again. Since my last round of treatments things seemed like they were finaly going according to plan. I did have to spend some time in the hospital after the last round of chemotherapy to receive platelets and some blood. But that was expected. I got home and was able to resume a regular life again. I was going to school, went to some hockey games... all in all i was getting ready for the next round.
Then, last Friday I began to notice that I seemed to be getting more and more tired as the days went on, not more and more fit as one would expect. That night I noticed minor chest pains while I slept... Things started feeling eerily familiar to what had happened to me a just 6 weeks earlier. Could I be having another pericardial effusion? I pushed that question out of my head for as long as I could --and that was just one more day. On Sunday morning I woke up and was having noticeable shortness of breath and a racing heart beat. I couldn't deny it anymore... it was time to go back to the emergency room.... Fuck....
After getting to the hospital, I walk up to the counter of Emergency Room and explain to them my problem. Not waisting a minute they shuffle me right to the back where i sit on a gurney. Not even a minute goes by before nurses and doctors start showing up asking questions, poking me with needles, strapping me to several machines, hooking me up to oxygen. 15 minutes into my ER stay, they were performing an ultrasound of my heart, and yes, I did have another pericardial effusion, there was a lot of fluid around my heart...Again... Fuck...
I got transfered to a bed back in the Leukemia wing of the oncology floor which was nice. I got to be back amongst the familiar faces that have taken care of me so well, and been so kind to me over this past year. That night was far from restful. Although I was in a lot less pain and distress than earlier in the day thanks to oxygen and some of the anti-inflamatory drugs they gave me. I recieved constant visits from residents checking me out. It did feel good to be looked after but seriously does it have to be at midnight? Oh but it got better... They decided that 4am would be a good time for me to go down to get a CT scan of my chest. Seriously??? 4am??? I just was in a nice deep sleep... The awesomeness of this adventure continues... Fuck...
On Monday things moved along at the usual deliberate pace at the hospital... everything seems to take ages there. In the afternoon we finally hear from the cardiology team that want go ahead and drain the fluid... not to much later I get taken down to cardiology and they start getting me ready for this procedure... My personal favorite is when they hook me up to an empty oxygen tank, and the nurse spent 5 min arguing with me whether or not the tank was on. As for the procedure itself it went really really quick -- probably less then 15 minutes. I will spare everyone the gory details, but I will say it was not pleasant. You are given some novocaine where they insert the needle, and some relaxant, but you are most definitely conscious and very aware that they are working on you. Once they were done they show me a one liter bottle that is half full of clear almost urine colored liquid and tell me this is what we drained from your heart. It really is stunning to physically see the volume of fluid that was sitting in your chest --it really is no wonder that my pulse was racing and I had trouble breathing. The next surprise was that they were going to transfer me to the ICU as opposed to my old room. Turns out that the nurses on my floor weren't comfortable with the idea of having to monitor a drain coming from my heart. In all honesty, I completely understand there position -they were oncology nurses, this is not something that they do day in day out.
Once in the ICU, and after I hooked up to about 100 different monitors coming from my chest and each limb, I am able to relax somewhat. I imediately notice that I am feeling much better. I guess it is not at all surprising considering the volume of liquid that they removed from my chest. The only thing preventing me from breathing normally was soreness from the procedure itself.
The ICU really has to be the least restful place on the planet. You really don't get much sleep because people are walking in constantly, one alarm or another is going off, and the fact that you can't really move very much. That really was the thing that got to me the most. By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was feeling much better, hardly any fluid was coming out of the drain they had left in, yet I was still tied up to all these wires and cords. Every movement I made had to be calculated so that I don't accidentally tie myself to the IV pole. It really was time for me to go. Luckily the doctors agreed. I was being sent home once again!
The excitement and the joy of going home was somewhat dampened by the frustration of running into complications all the time. Why wasn't anything going smoothly whit this process. And what on earth was causing these cardiac effusions all the time? Our initial theory that this was caused by the ATRA that I was taking was obviously false -I hadn't taken it 6 weeks. So yea... This game wasn't any fun anymore...
