Day 14

Oh man, today was great. Lots of rest and almost no new predicaments. Only thing new going on is that at some point yesterday when my platelets were really low, i must have sneezed or coughed at some point, which caused some scleral hemorrhaging (the white of my eyes bled). so about half of both whites of my eyes are blood red, but it hasn't affected my vision at all. this actually happened to me last year, only it was in my retina, so that time i experienced some focal loss of sight. that said, its painless, and will go away on its own. the cool part is that catholics have praying to me outside my door all day. j/k. my throat is much better, although i was a little to ambitious in choosing my supper tonight; still need to stick to soft foods for now.

my counts for today were low across the board, so i needed blood and platelets again. the docs have boosted my platelet level up to try and prevent any further bleeding from the eyes or any other miracles i may perform. white count is still somewhere below 0. fyi, i'm not sure what amount these numbers are indicative of or if they're percentages or what, but the normal level for a white count is anywhere from 4-11. normal ratio for hemaglobin is 14-18,(anything below that is considered anemic, which can be indicative of many things so don't freak out if you ever hear that your hemaglobin is low... but definitely ask why, lol) and normal platelet count is 140-440. when i was got a call that something was wrong with me, i entered the hospital with a white count of 1.7, hemaglobin at 4, and platelets at 0. i didn't know what any of this meant at the time, but it sure made the doctors and nurses whisper whenever they heard those numbers, so i took it that my levels had seen better days. right now they are trying give my white cells a boost with the neupogen shots i had mentioned earlier so that my body can start fighting off germs again. with hemaglobin, they try to keep me at 8 or above, and they just bumped my low platelet level up to 30. i finished getting chemo two days before i had the transplant and it killed off as many fast growing cells as it could (hair follicles, mouth tissue, epidermis, etc.) in a short time and is supposed to be gone by the time they introduce the donor cells, so when my body finally recovers and the donor cells take the place of the old cells (sort of) then i should start producing all of this stuff again, and will no longer need transfusions as much. it could take as much as a year for my counts to actually get back to normal. so, i know that was an extremely rudimentary explanation, but i hope that gives a little insight into these numbers i keep spewing out daily. i know there are at least two doctors and a nurse reading this so please don't call me out for the idiot that i am, but feel free to correct or add anything pertinent to the subject. okay, take care, and sorry about all typos and grammatical errors. yes, i am actually that lazy.