So, today I had my first real live blood letting. Don't get your mind twisted. A blood letting is exactly what you think it is. Don't let the modern term 'theraputic phlebotomy' sway you into thinking this is anything more than draining me of bad blood.
Now, there's an entire back story as to how this is all going down now and how far I've fallen off the recovery wagon thanks to my erratic co-pilot GVHD, but I haven't hada the inspiration to write about it as in depth as I should (Read: TV was really good over the last few weeks).
The gist is that while I've been recovering slowly, toxins have been accumulating in my body as well as very high volumes of iron. It has reached a point where I can no longer function for an entire day. I'm yet again slumped into short term disability, trying to claw my way back to being a productive member of society. Yeah. It sucks. But i digress.
Here we are, on Meatless Monday no less (that is another story for another time) at The Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania Blood Donation Center and I'm peering around the corner looking for the leach room to get this blood letting on the road. Sucks for me, there are no leaches. It's just a standard blood donation and they dispose of the blood at its completion. Pssht.
Anita and I sat there as the nurse prepped my arm by rubbing it with what I could only surmise was iodine by the smell of it. I'm not freaked out or anything. When you've had as many major and minor procedures as I've had over the past 4 years, iodine is the least of your concerns. From me accompanying Anita to her blood donations, I came prepared for a short ordeal. I brought my tablet to watch a movie on while the blood was being drained to pass the time. Normally, when Anita donated blood, it took upwards of 45 minutes. That sounds like an episode of Mad Men to me!
Apparently, the hospital had an entirely different time line of events. When she finally revealed the 16 gauge needle that was to pierce my now slightly jaundiced looking skin (from all the iodine) I have to admit my mouth fell open a bit. To her credit, she didn't give me a moment to hesitate and she shoved that tree truck right into my arm until it disappeared and before I could protest. Wow. It was a big needle. Google it. 16 gauge. Not fun.
Of course, since the whole and drainage system she had now created in my arm could roughly service a small restaurant, the blood let out in literally 6 minutes. It took Anita longer to pick out her shoes this morning than it did for this procedure to come to completion.. Great work, right?
The funniest part of the whole thing was watching the nurse slink away after she'd treated my arm for the bleeding over to the nurses' station with the bag of blood in her hand. It was almost TOO nonchalant, the way she just plopped that sealed bag of my blood into the bio hazard disposal bin. It made me kind of sad. I fought for 4 years and went through HELL to accumulate enough semi-healthy blood that they just drained and so unceremoniously disposed of. That blood deserved a much more heralded end than the one it received.
So that's where I am. On our way home, I actually did start feeling a bit woozy from having lost blood (Anita drove back from Philly). I have another session of blood letting in 2 weeks and they'll check the toxin level at that point. Then we'll see. I am growing weary of the uncertaintly involved in all of this now.
Before, I had assumed that 2/11/12, the one year anniversary of my transplant would be the final marker. The last time I would have to keep track of how I was feeling. Somehow, things got out of control. I got WORSE after that date and have yet to recover. I met a nice lady while waiting for Dr. Stadtmauer who also had a stem cell transplant and was THREE YEARS into having complications. She's much stronger than I am because if I have to do this for 2 more years and STILL not see a light at the end of the tunnel? You might as well put me in a rubber room now. But I guess I'll save that sort of anymosity for my explanation as how I got to phlebotomy.
I can't wait for baseball season! Let's go Yankees!
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