Day +4 - Chest x-ray, new migraine medicine

Not much to report. Walked 2 miles again today. That means I've walked 26 miles total since I've been in the hospital. A marathon! Today I definitely noticed more fatigue after finishing each walk, and in general during the day. My hematocrit is at 28, and they'll do a red-blood transfusion once it drops to 26, probably early next week. Neutrophils are at 0.01, and platelets have dropped to 26. Feels like old times, looking at these low numbers, since those are the numbers I have been living with for most of last year.

The new Immitrex migraine medicine works great. I took some last night after ending up with another excruciating migraine, and it killed the headache cold in about an hour. It wasn't funny then, but the worst of my headache was happening right when the visual effects of the voriconazole were kicking in, which for me consists of light sensitivity and pulsating lights that blink behind my eyelids. So here I am trying to get the room as dark as possible because my head hurts, and then when I close my eyes the whole world is flashing like a strobe light, which is made even worse because of the light sensitivity! Ugh, it was a mess. But the Immitrex was great stuff and knocked it out cold. Except that it's causing some minor bone pain around my shins that goes away quickly, so it's worth it. Last night the bone pain happened while I was sleeping, and I remember part of a vivid dream where I thought my feet were being harvested or re-attached. I remember waking up and checking that they were still there!

I had a routine chest x-ray to check for fluid in the lungs, which is common when you're bed-ridden and don't get up much. Luckily I was given the chance to walk to the x-ray room instead of being wheeled around in a bed, and it was nice to sort of "get out" and see some of the other parts of the hospital.

Lunch today was the first meal where the mucositis I'm slowly developing started to become a problem. I'm still doing phenomenally well, according to the doctors and oral medicine folks, but have started developing some canker sores along the rear edges of my tongue, and some lesions in my upper gums. The canker sores make it painful to move your tongue while eating, like picking food from your teeth and all the other stuff your tongue takes part in. But my appetite is still there, and the nausea is being kept at bay, so things are looking good :)

My dad stopped by after checking out the Chinese New Year parade in the International District, and brought the new version of iLife with him. I'm excited to try the new iPhoto with its face-matching and geo-tagging features on our 20,000+ photo collection. Cindy and Brian stopped by just before my dad left, but I ended up sleeping the whole time they were here since we had just finished another mile-walk around the floor and I was exhausted. Sorry about that!

Today I had a small fever of 99.8 for several hours before it went down. The doctors expect fevers, and this one wasn't enough to worry about. It's notable since up until this point my temperature has been perfectly normal.

Johanna is finally feeling better, and was well enough to stop by tonight so that we could hang out and watch Monk. She's had a cold for the last couple of weeks and has been playing it safe to make sure she was 100% over it before coming in. Yay!