"Enjoying" Abdominal Pains and Mouth Sores

Well, the past couple days have been marked with the advent of two not-so-fun side effects of the chemo and my lack of neutrophils: mouth sores and pains in the abdomen. The abdominal pains began on Saturday night and have increased since then in both intensity and frequency. Yesterday morning, we had a CT scan done on my abdomen to see if we could find the cause of the discomfort, but alas, we found nothing. In one way, that's encouraging: there's no infection. On the other hand, what the heck IS causing the pain? We don't know. So, for now, we're just treating me for the pain and ensuring that it doesn't get out of hand. The pain in my abdomen does spike on occasion, leaving me feeling weak and making it difficult to breathe. It seems to be worse when I stand up or walk.

The mouth sores are along the outer edges of my tongue, right where the tongue rubs against my teeth. Not so much fun. I'm also developing a sore back-of-the-throat. If it all gets much worse I may have to ditch eating for a while and go on TPN (IV nutrition that both looks and smells like sour milk).

I'm getting very excited about the drive I'll be holding on my birthday (June 28) for donors to be added to the National Marrow Donor Program's registry. That's how my donor was found, and I want to give back to the system that has potentially saved my life. We don't know yet, nor will we know for some time, what are the end-results of my allogeneic (donor) stem cell transplant, but what I do know is this...without my transplant, the chance of a cure for my cancer stood at 0%. Now, it's much, much better than that. I have set the goal for myself to see 100 people added to the donor registry that weekend, and I'm working hard to see that happen. I have invited all of my Facebook friends, and several of them have invited others. I'm hoping that my efforts are enough. This is something I feel incredibly passionate about. I'm even going to try to lure more people there with some discounted food from Café Rio, Moki's Hawaiian Grill or Chili's and a special appearance by Jeremy Hoop's band, Mayday RED. We'll see how it goes.

My donor's cells should start to show us something somewhere around Day 12 to 14, counting from the transplant date (May 29th) as "Day 0." Today was Day 7. So, in theory, some time during the first half of the coming week, my blood counts should begin to make a comeback and I should begin to feel better shortly thereafter. Here's hoping...