But I Promise You This – I Will Always Look Out For You – That’s what I’ll Do

So, remember my life being a complete crapfest except for the people around me?  My health, finances, and basically life all going down the shitter?  Well, I got a little bit of a jolt in the right direction on my birthday courtesy of my hematologist and the new meds I’ve been taking.

First, let me tell you, the days leading up to my birthday were absolutely marked by failure.  The walls were falling down around me.  Even the day before my birthday, out of the blue, my (sort of) new camera that I bought less than a year ago…  Just stops working.  I mean…  That’s how deep it went.  How the Hell does a camera just randomly stop working the day before someone’s birthday?  I can’t lie, when it happened, I just broke down.  I really did.  I went to the basement and I balled for about 20 minutes.  I just couldn’t believe how badly things were going. 

Even the next day.  My birthday, the only day my doctor could squeeze me in to see him.  And it’s not like a trip to your local doctor; in and out in 45 minutes.  This is a whole trip to Philadelphia and promised to eat up at least 3 hours.  Of course.  So how did it end up?  Well, we left for the hospital around 2:30.  We drove down to my sister’s house and picked her up.  She drove into Philedelphia to the Hospital at UPENN.  Seemed normal enough.  We got there around 4:45.  I signed in, she scheduled me for the lab work.  After about 15 minutes, I was called in to have my blood drawn.  Still no problem, right?  I get called into the doctor’s office at about 5:15.  Still not bad.  We sit in the room and wait for him.  WE DID NOT SEE THE DOCTOR UNTIL 8:00-ish.  I’m not kidding.  Dr. Stadtmauer spends a lot of time with his patients and doesn’t rush anyone and he really is a very attentive and personal doctor.  Of course, the price you pay is that his appointments run late and you have to wait.  On top of that, we were squeezed in and overbooked in the first place.  Lots of fun.  I was so sad.  Our original plan was to have Craig meet us in Philadelphia with my niece and nephew and we were all supposed to have dinner together.  That was all blown up.  We were waiting so long that my mom (a diabetic) had to be given food and juice to keep her blood sugar in check!  I mean, it was unbelievable how long we had to wait.  This broke (by a long shot) ANY previous wait that we’d had there.

So anyway, he comes in around 8:00 with a big smile on his face.  I was the subject of a minor medical miracle and the first sign of hope I’d had since this whole mess started back up in July.  A few weeks earlier when I’d seen Dr. Stadtmauer, my platelet count was an astronomical 1.2M.  It was the main reason why the blood thinner wasn’t working and I ended up with the bloodclot/blood in my lung.  Well, just a few short weeks later on a new medication called Myleran, it had been reduced by almost 400K.  I had also had a blood transfusion of red blood cells the week prior and my hemoglobin count was holding strong at 9.6, the highest it has been in 3 months.  So basically, for the first time since July, ALL of my blood counts moved in the right direction.  I’d definitely say it was worth crying like a little girl the night before because everything was going wrong.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel a glimmer of hope that everything will be all right. 

Dr. Stadtmauer’s prediction is that I will be able to come off the Myleran in about 8 weeks with a normal platelet count and I could be off the new (awful) blood thinner in as little as six months.  Yep.  I could be up and running and “normal” in 6 months.  Wow.  Typing it out and reading it makes it seem even more fantastic.  Let’s hope everything goes as predicted.

Here goes nothing!