Tuesday, August 22

It’s a late evening, sitting in the dark of Kerrie’s hospital room, while she finally sleeps.

The medication they have started her on, to build up her white blood cell count, has a nasty little side effect of making your bones ache. This is the same thing I will have injected, for several days, prior to doing the bone marrow transplant. I had been told it would take 2 – 3 days before I would feel the side effects, but they hit Kerrie the very first night!

She seemed so upbeat yesterday, but when the pain in her legs started last night I think we both knew it was going to be downhill from there. It was a long night.. with almost no sleep for her. I felt horrible, because I was fighting to keep my eyes open and stay with her.. but no matter how hard I tried I would drift off while she was talking to me. What a great “roomate” I am! She’s in pain, sad, frustrated, just wanting someone with her… and I’m nodding off every few minutes. I’m just glad I could be here. Even if I couldn’t stay awake the whole time.

I think she’ll get her revenge though 🙂 She “almost” hesitated when she was telling me about the shots they were giving her. Maybe she was afraid I would back out of this whole thing ( She knows better!)…She knows I HATE needles ( even more than spiders) but she thought she should let me know about these shots. I think her words were something like
” I need to warn you…It really stings Jenn. The needles are much bigger than a regular shot and it really stings. I only have to have one a day.. but you will be getting two everyday.. look at the bruise it caused on my stomache.”

I let her know that I had already read the material on these injections and I knew what I was in for. I would take 20 shots a day for her If I had to… might have to draw the line at 21, but we could discuss it.

Because these shots have to be injected into the fatty tissue on the arms, legs or abdominal area Kerrie and I decided it would be a good idea if I try to put on as much weight as possible, so there are plenty of places for me to have these injections. My friend, Colleen, and I have decided we will just eat at McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, 3 meals a day, for the next 2 weeks. I should have plenty of places for injections by then!

Kerrie spoke with the doctor, this morning, and told the doctor she was concerned that she had been asking for pain medication too much. The doctor just shook her head and said she probably wasn’t asking for it enough. The whole point of “Pain Management” was to take care of the pain before it became moderate to severe… not wait until it was intolerable and then ask for pain killers. She was waiting until she couldn’t bear it anymore, before she would ask for something, because she was afraid she was asking for it too much!

After little sleep last night, Kerrie did her best to stay in a good mood today. I am so proud of her and how strong she is being about all of this. She wants out of here, wants that catheter out of her neck, wants to be able to step outside and feel the sun on her skin… but she remains the compliant patient, the friendliest person on her floor and an obvious “favorite” of her medical staff. You should see them smile when they come in to her room.

Even the man who delivers the mail to the patients just seems to love her. He walked in the room today, handed her a stack of mail and said he loves coming to this room because he always has a bunch of mail for her and he loves to see her face brighten up when he delivers her cards. She really does “light up” so thank you to everyone who has sent a card.. you have no idea how much it makes her smile.

You should see her room. Cards, angels, hats, silk sunflowers, pictures.. everywhere they will allow us to put up tape/decorations. The staff says they love coming to her room, because it’s so cheerful, and she’s started to pick up a reputation with the other patients and their visitors. People will walk up to the window of her room, just to look in, because they’ve heard about all the cards, etc. Everytime this happens it just makes her day.. and it’s because of all of you!!!

Hopefully tonight will be a better night and tomorrow will be one of her good days.Especially since she knows she can ask for something for the pain before it gets bad. She’s been sleeping for almost two hours now and the staff shouldn’t be in to take vitals for at least another two hours.. as long as those pain killers keep doing their job she should have a good nights sleep!

She must be having a nice dream right now… she just said something about ” being happy the paper could be made another way, because that meant we could put the trees back.” Then she said, “right? right? We can put the trees back now?”

Yes, Kerrie.. we can put the trees back now. Good night!