The Die is Cast

At 10:30 AM this morning I received 400mg of Melphalan over 30 minutes. Dr. Bishop's nurse had recommended sucking on ice cubes to decrease the drug's uptake in the mouth, and hopefully prevent, or a least ameliorate, the possible side effect of stomatitis (a sloughing and inflammation of the mouth lining). So I sucked on ice cubes during the infusion and for one hour afterwards. I am just minutes away from the end of the fast I started Wednesday night in preparation for this chemo - 65.5 hours. My first food is going to be a LARGE gourmet chocolate chip cookie that my sister Lorna brought me from NYC! Need to get some calories in before the nausea, etc., from the melphalan.

The intended target of the Melphalan is those nasty myeloma cells in my marrow. I hope they are ALL dying right now. They will give me my sister Nancy's stem cells on Monday, and then it takes about 7 days for my white and red blood cell, and platelet counts to begin to come back up.

No turning back now!

PS the cookie is delicious