More Chemo and a Broken Back

After 2 ½ weeks home, I returned to Arkansas for more fun.  Upon arrival, they drew labs and checked my numbers.  After VDT-PACE and 2 weeks home, my numbers had started INCREASING again.  This was not a good sign.  The doctor was also taken aback.  The expectation was that the numbers would continue to fall slowly until transplant.  The graph was showing the opposite- a rapid increase.  Now we weren’t sure really what to expect.  We were going to do another round of VDT-PACE to try to get the numbers lower for transplant.  This was the same regimen that sent me by ambulance to the ICU last time so obviously I was a little nervous about getting all of it again!  Again, they hooked me up to the 24 hour chemo bag that would pump all of the seven different drugs into my body day and night.  The bag at first appeared very non-threatening.  I grew to hate that bag, especially the sound of the pump every 5 seconds all.night.long.  It was like listening to a smoke detector beep.  I was spending 5-6 hours each day in infusion getting all the things- blood, platelets, potassium, fluid, and growth shots.  In the days leading up to transplant, I began having extreme back pain.  The slightest movement would send shooting pain up and down my entire spine. I had to sleep on my back without moving a muscle or I would wake in screaming pain.  I was using a walker to get to and from the bathroom in the hotel room.  Riding in the car was unbearable.  I had to brace myself in the car with my arms because going over any small bump would send the pain everywhere.  Myeloma is a blood cancer but it is also considered a cancer of the bone marrow.  It produces osteoclasts which begin breaking down bone uncontrollably.  When the disease is active, it weakens and attacks the bones and forms lesions. Now that the tumors were shrinking from the heavy chemo cocktail, my weak vertebrae had nothing to rest on.  They began fracturing one after another.  Never in my life have I experienced such pain and moved so slowly. They rushed me in for scans which showed 7 or so fractured vertebrae.  They said they could do kyphoplasty, but they could only fix 5 at a time.  They would do 5 and then do the others at a later date. Kyphoplasty involves injecting bone cement into the vertebral body to repair the fractures.  The pain became so intense that I could no longer take it and needed to be moved inpatient so they could control the pain.  Being moved to inpatient would also mean my stem cell transplant would need to be done inpatient.  It was still the year of covid so they weren’t letting any visitors into the hospital.  My mom was not going to accept that.  She was going to make sure someone let her in to be there with me during the transplant!  They made a deal with her that she could be there, but once she was in the room with me, there would be no leaving.  She would not be able to leave the room for any reason- to go use a bathroom, get snacks, get water, pick something up, nothing.  We also had no idea how long to expect to be in that room.  It would all depend how long it took me to recover from the transplant.  So, my mom became a harbored fugitive in my hospital room.  Doctors would come in and she would be hanging out on the bench which she made into her bed.  They never expected her to be there because of the “no visitors” rule.  We didn’t have access to the washers and dryers since she couldn’t leave the room so she would hand wash our clothes in the bathroom sink with Dawn soap she brought and hang them around the room to dry on any hook or surface she could find.  This is where it got a little comical.  Doctors would come in to speak with me and there would be underwear, t-shirts, pants hanging EVERYWHERE around the room. She was also constantly washing because I was suffering from all of the chemo and sweating uncontrollably every night as well as having some crazy GI issues (TMI!). We had a LOT to wash!  This hospital stay was another miserable experience. I was on round the clock pain meds and a plethora of pills used to control side effects from the chemo.  There was one day I woke up and asked my mom what time it was and she told me it was 6:30 pm!  I was on drugs upon drugs upon drugs.  I have never taken so many pills at one time in my life.  Some of them, we had to handle with gloves as they are too toxic to be handled with bare hands.