What a first day!

Hey, everybody! Cheryl here!

Since Dave did the blog entries for from earlier today, thought it was my turn to do some blogging. We left Moscow on Saturday afternoon to my parents' after midnight. Dave got up moderately early on Sunday to head up to Portland for a Magic tournament, while I hung out with my parents. The original plan was to play golf. However, it is late September in the Willamette Valley. Rain. SIGH. So we went out for breakfast, and went back to the house to nap, read, stitch, or watch pro football. NFL is not my cup o' tea (give me college ball any day), but it was fun to watch ex-duck Joey Harrington play well. My nephew Clifford showed up during the afternoon to visit, before I head into the hospital. He just got home from completing the Marines recruit training in San Diego. Many of you know how I feel about the war taking place in the Middle East right now, but I just want to focus here on how proud I am of him. Cliff had a goal, knew what he wanted, and made the adult decision to go for it, achieving that goal his first try. I can't tell you how many times I've told friends, relatives, and acquaintances that the only truly way to be happy is to do what makes you happy. Jobs are jobs are jobs, but if you have something that truly makes you happy in a career, you are blessed. We finished off the evening by playing cribbage. Dave and I finished the night with a 4-2 game lead on the parents. Take that!

I had to arrive at the hospital in Portland at 7:30 a.m. That means we have to leave Albany by 5:30 am. Ugh. The alarm went off at 4:30, and Dave hit the snooze 3 times. Like clockwork, after the 3rd attempt at extending our sleep, I heard a door open, slipped feet shuffle across the carpeted living room, open the door to our bedroom, and look in at us. "Yes, we're up," I call out, before my mother had the chance to rouse us from our warm, comfy snuggling. The door closes, we snuggle in further, but its too late. Dave gets up, turns on a horribly bright light, and we proceed to put the clothes on, brush the hair, and get ready to head to the hospital. I slept pretty well, though had a dream that we were late, and Dave wouldn't hurry, as he sat in the middle of a pile of toys that he said needed to be sorted into "Ebay", "Yardsale", and "Goodwill" piles. The alarm woke me up just as I was yelling at Dave. Good thing I didn't yell in my sleep!

Traffic was OK. Its amazing how many cars are on the road between Salem and Portland at 5:30-6:00 a.m. Traffic never slowed down, really, until we were nearly at the hospital. We got up to the floor, found our room (shared with a very nice woman with a whole heck of a lot of terminal cancer), and began to entertain, oh, 6-8 people who did the poking, proding, and blood taking. Oh boy.

At 9:00 am, I was taking down to the Cardiovascular unit, and received my "triple lumen catheter", better known as a central line. The insert a long tube into one the large veins in your neck, which is extended into the upper chamber of the heart. They gave me anti-anxiety medication prior, though I'm not sure I actually had a response. A shot of pain killer is injected into the area (which definitely hurts), and then they snake the tube down to the heart. The snaking part felt weird! After that, it was back to my room. Dave and I hung out for the rest of the afternoon, and my parents showed up right around 3:00, and saw me get my first dose. They first start an IV of glucose, and then mix in the Interleukin-2 into that. It took 15 minutes to empty the pump, but they kept it in my catheter for another hour.

So far my symptoms aren't too bad. I'm a bit flushed, though no fever, a single hive on my chest, and my heart is beating faster. These are nothing in comparison to the symptoms I'm likely to feel by Wednesday afternoon. Oh, boy, flu symptoms.

I'll update you more tomorrow. Its too hot to have a laptop on my lap.


Cheryl