Yesterday afternoon, I started getting queasy again, and I opted only for a dinner of Ensure. By the way, that stuff and electrolytes have become my best friends. By now, I was feeling like I had the flu coming on.

Like any large clinic, Ruiz has groups of staff that work together as a team. This evening, Dr. Priesca came to administer my evening injection. I told him I was sick to my stomach most of the day, and he started me on a bunch of meds. I went to bed early, waking several times in cold sweats and wet sheets. Eventually, the “flu” broke, and I slept like a baby, waking well-rested at the crack of dawn. I felt so much better, and that’s supposed to be the worst of it. I’m done with the hard part :). Not to tempt fate, I took my morning medication with a bottle of Ensure.

Dr. Leon came by for the morning injection. This is going to be my routine for the next several days, except that on Monday, I go to the hospital to have a PICC line (a big catheter) inserted into a main artery above my clavicle. This “portal” will be used for all future I.V. work, including stem cell harvest, chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation. It will stay in for over a week.

My appetite came back in spades. Judy made me a well-done hamburger with grilled onions on a burnt bun. Delicious. Pretty soon, even that will be off limits after I enter a stage called, neutropenia, when I can only eat reconstituted, freeze dried food, to ensure I consume no bacteria.