This morning I was up at 4:30am! The doc scheduled an MRI for me to get my pancreas checked out. I HATE MRI’s. If you have never had one, hope that you don’t need to get one soon. You have probably heard about being smashed into a “tube”, but no one ever warned me about the loud noise that goes in conjunction with the testing.
When I got to the MRI room, the technicians tried to persuade me against getting the sedative to knock me out during testing. They strapped me down to the table with my arms above my head and had a huge board on top of my stomach. Then the noise started. The techs gave me some earplugs, but those didn’t help the noise that came screeching out of the tube!
I immediately yelled for the techs and begged them to give me the sedative. The whole reason why they were against me being sedated was because they needed me to do some sort of breathing exercises so they could get good photos of the pancreas area. If I was asleep, then it would make it a little difficult to do this. I told them I HAD to have the sedative and would do my best to stay awake. They finally agreed and we began the test. Oops…I fell asleep a couple of times during the test but all in all, everything went fine.
The rest of the day was spent mostly napping. I have been extremely constipated from taking all of the pain meds, which is expected. The doctor that I saw today was the same doc I saw last time I was here for the pancreatitis. He kept asking me what I wanted to do. This was really frustrating because I don’t have the answers. This is the reason why I came to the hospital…to get answers from professionals in the field! I was kind of under the impression that the doc thought that the stomach pain was from constipation and not from other complications such as pancreatitis.
The positive thing is that the swelling and pain in my right leg is going down. I am still wearing the ugly compression socks. This is a huge stress reliever to know that the clot is getting better because the doc once again seemed unconcerned at the condition of my leg. He said that if anything changed, such as my oxygen level, then that’s when we would do another test for the clot in the lung. So far my oxygen level has remained steady at about 95 (out of 100).
The nurse today brought me some information on my blood count levels. My white blood cells are still on the lower end of average, but for the most part doing well. This means that I am not as susceptible to sicknesses as I had originally thought. However, as I go through more chemo cycles, this is likely to change and my white blood count should go lower and lower. On another note, my red blood cells are really low. This means that eventually I most likely will have to get a blood transfusion. I really don’t know much about this, but it doesn’t sound good or pleasant.
I am finally starting to get some energy back and don’t feel constantly nauseous. I go into chemo next week so I am hoping to get out of the hospital and be able to enjoy the weekend. I am going to have to experiment a little on activities to see what my body/brain is able to tolerate. I definitely will have to find some more/new activities besides working out and events that are focused on drinking.