Recuperation

Hello, and how are we all feeling today? If you are feeling well then we all are feeling well, because I am in fact feeling much more like myself, which is well enough. Figured I might as well cut right to the chase and answer the most all-encompassing question which might be on anyone’s mind after Monday’s pre-collection post: I’m fine, thanks.

(Yesterday’s post was something I started writing on Monday afternoon, somewhere between looking for a distraction from the low-grade skeletonache and legitimately wanting to talk about Supernatural and RPGs and all that. I was not expecting it to spin out for 3000 words, but that does happen to me from time to time. I finally finished it last night, while recuperating in the evening after the collection, and figured I might as well use it for my daily content. Here endeth the explanation for a post that may have seemed to come out of nowhere and did not address the collection at all despite appearing at the tail end of Collection Day. Back to the present.)


I honestly have to say that I’m feeling surprisingly good, considering. I was somewhat worried that receiving the final injection on Tuesday morning would mean that my barely tolerable flu-like feeling of crappiness would persist (or even potentially get 20% worse) for yet another 24 hours, and then slowly subside over the course of Wednesday and most likely beyond, maybe even another five full days. I briefly entertained the thought of asking the staff at the collection center how long I could expect it to take for my symptoms to go away, and then realized it really didn’t matter because it would simply take as long as it would take. And the back half of Tuesday was as rough as I’d anticipated, to the point where I had to lie down for an hour or so late in the afternoon, just dozing because my bones hurt a little too much for me to sleep deeply, but it did get better as the clocked ticked on. In retrospect now I think a large part of it was psychosomatic or otherwise incidental. I had no appetite for dinner, but that is almost certainly because of the triumphant gorging in which I indulged at my beloved Buffalo Wing Factory immediately after the collection was over at lunchtime. I felt pretty low-energy, too, but I’d attribute part of that to the fact that I had been admonished not to pick up my little guy for a day or so, and he’s at that stage right now where sometimes being picked up and held or roughhoused with or flown around or whatever is all he wants to do, so not being medically cleared for that kind of interaction bummed me out. Still, after the little guy was in bed for the night (a process facilitated by Pop-pop since I was on restriction and my saintly wife was putting in a truncated shift at work) I found the wherewithal to straighten the house a bit and make myself feel the tiniest bit useful.

But this morning I woke up with a significant reduction in the pain levels, which was a welcome surprise. Still a very mild headache and the occasional twinge in a joint here or there, but nothing like yesterday. I brought some ibuprofen with me to work but I have yet to take any because I haven’t felt like I’ve needed it. I don’t know if it was the excess buildup of stem cells that was contributing to the overall feeling of wretchedness, which was relieved by having them gone, or if the magic blend of saline, anticoagulants and calcium that was pumped into me at the collection center had some restorative effects, but the point is I think it’s safe to say I’m out of the thorniest part of the woods, at least.

I feel I should at least mention the collection itself but it was really fairly anti-climactic. You can hardly tell by looking that I was hooked up to machines for hours, since the nurses were pro enough to get the needles in me with nary a bruise. Holding the arm with the outgoing needle relatively immobile and completely unbent for a little over four hours got tiresome at about the halfway point, but I was well-distracted by some Joss-tastic entertainment, as my wife and I finally watched Serenity (more about that later, no doubt) and a couple of episodes of Buffy on DVD. The process could have taken up to five hours but I was done in a little over four because I’m such a good bleeder. And, apparently, I respond well to Filgrastim and they got as much volume of stem cells as they needed sooner than later. And that’s pretty much it, my work is done, and I can only hope that it does the right kind of good for the intended recipient, even though I’ll probably never know.

All in all it wasn’t that bad. I can bitch about pretty much anything, but knowing what I know now, I’d do it all again. Come to that, I might – the database has already matched me as a potential donor twice thanks to my mongrelized European hybrid vigor. It could very well happen again.