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Health update

Don't worry, everything is fine.

If you've noticed that blogging has been a little sparse for the past few days, and dropped to nearly nothing today, it's not just because the news has been a little dull. It's because I feel crummy.

A week ago I got an upset stomach. The next day I developed a peculiar and intense pain in my upper back as well as severe headaches off and on. Plus my sleepiness and fatigue went off the charts.

Last night the upper back pain got so bad I couldn't sleep. I tried treating it with Advil, morphine, and dilaudid, the last of which is a very powerful opioid. None had more than a slight effect. The stomach I tried treating with Pepcid, Zofran, and Tums. No dice.

This morning I started breathing heavily, so I finally went into the ER to get checked out. Luckily, we were pretty thorough in making sure the ER doc knew that I had just gone through a lengthy CAR-T procedure, and a CT scan showed lytic lesions in a couple of my vertebrae. The lesions are caused by multiple myeloma and have been there for nine years now, but even so it was enough to get the doctor to contact my transplant doctor from City of Hope, and he had the answer: inflammation. Unfortunately, he also had the solution: dexamethasone. So now I'm back on the Evil Dex™ for a couple of weeks. Which also means I'm back on the Ambien for a couple of weeks. Blah.

I doubt we would have figured this out on our own, so it's a good thing he made that call. And even the dex will be worth it if it fixes me up.

OK, fine, but what are we supposed to do with it?

11 thoughts on “Health update

  1. Steve_OH

    Hang in there, Kevin. I am currently in Tanzania, and the internet access is rather spotty, so I don't know if the positive vibes I'm sending your way will arrive in a timely fashion. But at least I'm having a mint chocolate chip gelato right now, in your honor.

    Also, since it's ten hours later here than in California, I'll be able to read your dex-fueled middle-of-the-night ravings hot off the press.

  2. dilbert dogbert

    Religious folks don't know it but, to get to heaven you have to go thru hell. You will make it to the other side.

    1. cld

      The times I've slept in a water bed I woke up feeling like my spine had completely disarticulated, but in a good way.

      1. Vog46

        the Mrs and LOVED our waterbed when we owned one. it was the orthopedic version, it used hard water!

        we gave it to a relative when we moved

  3. Heysus

    Hey Kevin, if the evil Dex works, go for it. I'm so sorry things haven't been going well, Maybe it takes time for the whole body to catch on to the treatment that you have just had. Hang in there grasshopper.
    Re the button. Now a days, we are only to 'think' what we want the button to do and maybe it will or will not do it....

  4. Adam Strange

    Glad you were able to get help from an expert.
    If the Anti-Vaxxers were in charge, you'd be boiling onion roots for a compress.

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