Through the Valley I Go

Things have been a little rough over this past week. My small rash that started just on my arm and neck spread pretty much over my entire body besides my face. It was really bad on my feet, where it was burning and itching constantly. The rest of my body itched as well but not as bad as my feet. I saw my nurse practitioner on Thursday and she said "well hello donor". It is most likely the GVHD (graft verses host disease) getting worse. See, most likely my donors cells are moving around inside of me and my body is like hold on I don't recognize these as my own and are fighting them, hence the rash. A reaction of the unknown. They did a skin biopsy on my arm just to confirm that it is the GVHD. We wont get the results of that until Monday or so. She gave me a higher dose steroid cream to lather myself with to help the rash. If it doesn't get better just using that they are going to have to put me on oral steroids. They put you on steroids because they are what cures GVHD believe it or not. I am hoping that it doesn't come to that because along with it helping the problem it does cause a lot of side affects especially in mood swings and things such as that. Fortunately the cream is starting to work even after just a few days. My rash is starting to get a lot lighter and reducing in size.

Unfortunately the rash has not been the only thing going on right now. I have been extremely nauseous over this past week. For even a couple days, I have not even been able to keep any of my food down without vommiting. Along with that I have been having constant chills and a low grade fever. My NP was a little more concerned about all of these symptoms than even the rash. She has me on a constant schedule of nausea meds, but they only help for a short time. Yesterday I had blood cultures drawn to check if there is any bacteria that grows back confirming an infection. The on call BMT doctor is supposed to call me this weekend if they find anything. If it comes back positive I will be headed back in the hospital to probably receive antibiotics to get the infection under control. I am also supposed to be watching my temperature at home VERY closely to make sure it doesn't get any higher. The magic number is 100.5. If it reaches that high, back to the hospital I go. Lately it has been riding that fine line. It has been consistently at 99.5, but reached 100 last night. All of the other symptoms I have been having indicate something is going on inside of me. I guess this is my valley. I was really lucky in the beginning to not have any real issues or problems. I skated right through the first part of it. My NP says there are always going to be those peaks and valleys through this healing process. I am just going through a valley right now. So I am resting a lot and watching a lot of movies because I can't do much more than that. I get too nauseous doing anything else. I will try to keep everyone updated on what happens.