The Real Sunday.

You'll actually see that I have two posts from today. The first one was just kinda recap of the past three weeks - this one, will wow you with current events and what's been going on for the past 24 hours.

So...its no secret that Gleevec is a miracle drug for some forms of leukemia (mine specifically). I've been on it for about 15 days now. Early on, the only side effect I felt was a little nausea. That has subsided, but some more troublesome one's have popped up. First and foremost - I will say that the Gleevec is really knocking my white cells back to a normal level (I hit 9,000 last night, woot!). This is really just a small percentage of what it does and it can take a very, very long time to see a cytogenic response.

Over the past couple days, it seems that I've been a bit short of breath. More often than not - it occurs just about 8 hours after taking my meds. Last night - again, about 8 hours post Gleevec - I started feeling an irregular heartbeat. I waited about 30 minutes and decided I better head to the ER.

One of the few benefits of having Leukemia is that you get fast tracked at the ER. I had my vitals and was in a room in about 15 minutes. From there they did an EKG (normal by that time), blood work, CT Scan and Xray. Some of the more serious side effects of Gleevec can be fluid retention around the lungs and heart so I wasn't going to risk it. Luckily for me - most everything came back OK and the blood work revealed that I was down to 9,000 on my white count. I did have an elevated level on some sort of clotting test which is why they ran the CT just to make sure it didn't turn out to be some sort of embolism. Prior to this - they mentioned that the Hematoma in my leg being reabsorbed could also affect that number.

So I'm home now, and poor Kristin is along for the ride. The fear of something bigger going on in my body unfortunately occupies my mind too much and may even increase the severity of my symptoms. For me though - its just something I have to go through. For Kristin, she has to maintain her daily life and essentially become a single parent while I get better. It's got to be so much more difficult to be the witness than the patient.

I love her for this and so much more.