1/4/97
Yes, I am a leper, my shingles are contagious to people who have never had chicken pox. I found that out at the hospital, a place I must love, because I have been in and out of there all week. I ended up getting a platelet transfusion on the 30th, the day after I got my shingles, and besides my daily treks for blood tests, I was admitted again into the hospital on the 2nd for headaches, fever, and pain in my hands and abdomen. Plus my WBCs and platelets were low again. They wanted to do a spinal tap to see if the shingles virus, called the Zoster virus, had gotten into my spinal fluid. I got very nervous thinking about it, especially when the doctor said that it might be a little "uncomfortable." I know those words, and they mean "pain." All I could think about was a big huge needle going into my back, and me having to just take it. I might as well be abducted by aliens. Luckily, the team of doctors decided the test would come out negative and gave me IV anti-viral medicine along with antibiotics instead. Later that night they decided that my shingles might give my roommate, who was off having surgery, chicken pox. So at 1:00AM, I was taken to another ward and put into an isolation room. It was very quiet, and everyone who came in had to wear a mask. It is a weird feeling to feel like the germ carrier and see everyone in masks, for all year long I have been the one in the mask and I thought of everyone else as the leper. My world shrunk just a little more.

The good news is that I have finally come up with a workable visualization for my stagnant platelets. Platelets are my only blood part that refuses to respond to anything. I have not been able to really visualize at all, my mind wonders and it feels tired. It has been frustrating me, but this time I've got the right visualization, I'm sure. It involves a mother Droppie, who is like the mother cell that breaks off pieces that turn into platelets, and baby Droppies fly out from all over her and platelets pop out of them. I got the idea from something my dad said and something my sister said, and then I mixed that with a big mother Droppie who kept popping into my head. It had a very natural sort of evolution, which are the best kind!

I would like to have some energy back! I know I will get strong again, but right now I feel very zapped. I have no stamina and I get out of breath in seconds, but it will not last. It won't, it won't, it won't! I have just got to get through my last 17 treatments, for that is the new amount of pelvic treaments I have left after how ever long this break lasts. My pelvic bone marrow is going to be taking more of a beating, so other of my bone marrow is just going to have to take over. I had better visualize that too. Actually, I think I will start visualizing my very last treatment! I shall visualize me wearing a party hat!

1/9/97
I just got back from another stay at the hospital, and I am completely tired. I was admitted on Tuesday after a night of fever, chills and diarrhea, plus my platelets dropped again to 21 and my white count went down to 1.8. I spent two nights in a private room so I would not catch anything from any of the other patients, so I feel lucky to have had the privacy and quiet. They gave me a lot of IV antibiotics, and they took a lot of blood for cultures and counts. During my stay my platelets slightly climbed from 21 to 24 to 27, so I am going to believe that they are going to continue on an upward trend. They simply must! The one thing that has been bothering me, and still bothers me, is an uncomfortable feeling of fullness in my upper abdomen. The doctors think I may have an ulcer, so they gave me H2 blockers to allow it to heal. It is also possible that I have a bug that causes ulcers, and if that is true I will have to have a test done where they stick a tube down my throat and grab a sample from that area. This does not make me happy! Wearing a turtle neck makes me gag, so I cannot imagine what a tube will do. So for now I am on the wait, visualize and see plan.

My friend, Stephania, came to visit me in the hospital after she had her weekly blood test taken. She is on her sixth week of the Stanford-five program, and her hair has been falling out for the past week. She decided to comb her hair in my room after being afraid to for the past few days, for she knew it would come out. She had an amazing amount of hair to begin with, so she has held onto hers for longer than normal. I watched her comb her hair, and I watched it come out in brushfulls. Her hair was everywhere, in the sink, on the floor, and she saved a lot of it in a baggy. When she was done, she still had enough hair to put on her head and attach fall pieces in a very attractive way. She will not have to be a Qball like I was, and she probably won't feel like an alien like I did either.

I have succumbed to the fact that January of '97 is not going to be my big month where I can celebrate the end of my treatments. I would feel happy to just feel some strength again, have my abdomen feel normal again, and have a count of at least 100 platelets again. I cannot wait for my primary doctor, Dr. Cooney, to return from his safari trip in South Africa, for since he left I have been in and out of the hospital. I have so much to tell him, and I need his expertise now! I have the urge to meet him at the airport when he returns this week-end, but fortunately for him I have learned to curb my impulsiveness this year.

Meanwhile, I am back to giving myself Neupogen shots and taking an array of other medications. It reminds me of this time last year, when I began this many drugged journey to health. January 5th was the anniversary of my first day of chemo, and I thought that this entire ordeal would last only until August. I remember wondering how I was going to make it to August, and I am very glad that I did not know how long it was really going to take. It is a great feeling to have 1996 behind me, and I know that nothing I will go through now will ever compare to those first few purging weeks of chemo when I lost those twenty pounds of cancer and fluid in ten days. The human body is rather amazing!

1/12/97
It is Sunday and I just got back from an unsuccessful trip to the grocery store. I woke up feeling good, so I thought I would go shopping for some fresh food. All I wanted was baby carrots, avocados, mangos, cottage cheese, plain yogurt, and blue cheese dressing. I got to the store, picked out all my food, but on my way to pay for it I felt as if my head needed to be on a pillow or I might pass out. It was all I could do to get in my car and drive myself home. I was so close to fresh tasty food, but I had no choice but to leave it in the store. When I got home I crawled into bed and rested for two hours. I kept thinking about the food I left in the cart, and I started to get mad. I had hospital food for the first half of the week and canned or frozen food since I have been home. I cannot regenerate my body on that kind of food, so I have decided to give the store one more try. It is a good thing that I am stubborn, for I am determined to get the food I need. I have lost five pounds since Christmas, and that is a lot on a person who is just 5'3". I would call someone for help, but it seems like such a ridiculous request to ask someone to travel all the way over here for what probably seems like a minor necessity. I am going to slowly march into the store and gather my food, and then I am going to bring it home. I feel like a hunter out for a kill, and I plan to return victorious!

I did it! I got all my food, plus some, and I am now enjoying cottage cheese with avocados and blue cheese dressing. It is just about the best food I have ever eaten. I am very proud of myself! I feel like I have got some power back, and speaking of power, I think I have gotten some of my platelet power back too. I have been able to do platelet visualizations with ease, which can mean only one thing, I am a platelet making machine again. I have Slurpants to thank this time, for they have been helping me by pulling the big mother cells through the marrow to loosen the platelets so they can be free to travel into the blood stream. I do not want to boast too much, but I have the feeling that I will have some very happy doctors tomorrow, platelet-wise that is.

1/15/97
I have been thinking a lot about what to do with myself in the next six months or so, and today I have come to the conclusion that I am supposed to help other people. I was at the hospital waiting for my blood results, which I shall expound upon in a moment, when I found myself talking to a frustrated woman who was in extreme pain from radiation to her throat and mouth. She was in so much pain that when her doctor came out to tell her that her pain would subside soon, she did not believe her. So when her doctor left I told her about all the pain I had passed through during my many months of treatments, and how it did have an end. I made a few suggestions that had helped me with swallowing and burned skin, and I told her that she would probably have a few more weeks of pain. She was very surprised at all I had gone through, for she thought I was the "picture of health." She thought I was waiting for someone who was getting their treatment, so just by looking at me appearing normal gave her some hope.

When I got home from the hospital I got email from a high school student who needed information for a paper on chemotherapy that she was writing, and I also got email from someone who needed help learning how to visualize. Then I listened to my phone messages and a friend's room-mate just learned she has some form of Leukemia and she wants my help in how to help her get through the tests and chemotherapy that she is beginning today. Besides all that, I am in daily contact with my friend Stephania who is still in the midst of her chemotherapy for Hodgkins. It is only 3 PM, and I feel as though I am some sort of crisis center. I guess I have become a wealth of information over this past year, so I really should share it! And I have a lot of ideas on how I can do just that.

As for my own health, I shall shout "Yay!" My platelets rose to 36, which for me is a major leap. I am no longer worried about my bone marrow, for it is obviously snapping out of it's sleeping mode and has decided to make me some nice platelets. My WBC's were at 10.9, but then I have Neupogen to thank for that, although my last shot was the day before yesterday. So what that means is that my bone marrow is once again busy busy busy in the WBC department. I must say also that I took an active role in this upswing, for I never gave up on my visualizing, I started taking vitamins, and I even did my very first mini-work-out in a very long time. So as you might have guessed, today has turned out to be a very good day!

1/19/97
I saw Dr. Cooney on Thursday, and I must say that it was a reassuring visit. First of all, my all important platelets were at 40, which is the biggest overnight leap yet. I gave him a run down on my many weeks of complications that occured during his absence, and then we talked about what my future held. He told me that I may not be able to complete my pelvic radiation, and that I was not the first Hodgkin's patient who could not tolerate the entire lymphoid load. He also told me that there is no reason why I should not think of myself as "cured," for there is no disease in my body now anyway. I then asked him about if I did have more radiation, could I just have it on the right side where the biggest tumors were? He said that was just what he was thinking. Then I asked him how high my platelets should be to resume radiation and what if they did not reach that point? He said that my platelets need to be up to at least 100, but if they did not rise in the next month then he would do his favorite procedure, a bone marrow extraction. I told him that I knew he was going to say that, and when I did, he smiled and rubbed his hands together and said, "I love doing them." Never have I been so motivated to get my platelets up! Way up!

Slurpants pull the big mother cells, loosening platelets into my blood stream!

I have been doing my platelet visualizations daily, the "Slurpant Platelet Loosening" one, and they are now as easy as doing the "WBC Blort Bump." The platelets fall off the mother cells like the hair once flew off my head. I expect bountiful platelets, for me that is, on Monday! I need to do the Bump and the RBC Blort Flip also, for all my counts have been affected by all the megavolts of radiation my body has endured these past months. It is exhausting to do them all, and I must admit that I have been concentrating on my platelets. Tonight I shall attempt to do visualizations for all my counts, and that along with the vitamins I have been taking should give me decent counts by the morning. My mind is building it's stamina back to a highly visual state! My body shall soon follow suit!

1/22/97
I have been avoiding the hospital as much as possible lately, for I have been there almost every day for the past three months and I have decided that they can do without vials and vials of my blood. Now that Dr. Cooney is back, I can get a finger stick in his office and get instant blood results, instead of going through the usual blood sucking hospital that takes over an hour. This way I can call the hospital and tell them my results, and not have to see their blood thirsty faces. Besides, my Platelets are going to take a while to climb to the radiation zapping level of 100, for my latest platelet count was still only 50. Of course, a count of 50 is platelets-galore for me, and I can safely say that they are now rising a twice the rate. I can also positively say that my "Slurpant Platelet Loosening" visualization is finally the one that works. I have never worked so hard on a visualization before, even though it really is a simple one. It just proves that simple is best!

Back to Dr. Cooney, he had a skiing accident this week-end and broke his ribs. He is supposedly returning to work all bandaged up today, and I have an appointment with him on Friday. I guess the tables are turned now, he is the one in pain. I have to admit that one of the first things that crossed my mind was that if he had to do a bone marrow extraction on me, that he probably couldn't. If he tried to, I am sure that he would be in as much pain as I would be. Somehow it makes me feel relieved, for I perhaps have a little more time to build up my platelets before he gets the itch to drill into my bones. Actually, I shall avoid his extracting tools by getting my making so many platelets that even he would call me normal.

Last night, Brittany asked me if she was going to get sick like me when she grows up and has a baby. Somehow she thinks that having a baby can make you sick, which makes me think that she thinks my HD is her fault. So I had a long talk with her about how rare my illness is, and that nobody really knows how I got it. Then we had our usual talk about how much better I am doing, and it helps to have hair again so that she has a visual sign of my health. Plus, I am able to play cards with her for hours now, and that definitely makes her think she has her mommy back. I think that for the first time since I have been sick, Brittany truly believes that I will one day be completely better. But the day she will know that the bad days are behind us, is the day we step foot on the grounds of Disneyland! It won't be long Mickey!

1/28/97
I have amazing news! My platelets doubled in the last week! I had the lab technician run them twice, the first count was 109 and the second was 97. It does not matter which one was right, for either one means that my platelets are skyrocketing, and even more important, it also means that my bone marrow has not been destroyed. I visualized many times daily, ate a ton of good food, exercised slowly, took vitamins, and most of all I was persistent. Maybe this is all a lesson for me to learn to be patient, or maybe I just needed to appreciate the power of my mind, or perhaps my body was trying to ward off radiation for a while, or perhaps I needed a big scare so that I will have a nice reminder at the end of all this to take care of myself in the future, or last of all, it is likely just more proof that I am resilient and that nothing can kill me!

Now the doctors are probably going to be radiation happy with me, but it does not matter, for once again I have my wits about me, and I shall not let them toy with my life without major input from me. I will see Dr. Cooney on Friday and I expect him to do his little happy dance for me, it is something he does subconsciously whenever my blood or bone marrow pleases him. Last week, on Thursday, my platelets were only 53, and he was talking about doing a cat scan and bone marrow extraction in a few weeks. He even promised to do the bone marrow at the hospital so that he could knock me out for it, but with my new big platelet count, I do believe that he will agree on doing just a cat scan. I know that the radiation doctors are going to be frothing at the mouth when they see my platelet count, so I am going to have to discuss with them and Dr. Cooney the pros and cons of continuing pelvic radiation now or later. You see, I have a writing workshop scheduled for February and March, so my dilemma is whether to get zapped and risk feeling like a zombie during the class, or wait until after the class when I should have super strong blood. Either way, I am very proud of my blood today!