Feb 25th 2009

Found out why my BP's been acting weird. Apparently my hematocrit dropped the past 3 weeks and the nurse has been fiddling with my EPO. So normal points would be at 36 and right now its at 31. And its hard to take off all the fluid if my BP is too low. Ah, well. Tonight is gonna be interesting. We shall see. Waiting for the new insurance cards to come in. Looking forward to working with the transplant people again and I'm sure they'll be happy to know that I have solid medical insurance. The past 2 years since I started has been slow going. Thankful that we can begin again.

Over the midweek hump

It's Thursday. Didn't take off that much fluid last night. For some reason, my blood pressure bottomed out in the middle of treatment and I hadn't even taken off half the amount of my goal. Weird. Could it be I mis-judged my going on weight? Could it have been the mass amount of ceviche I consumed during the first hour? Who knows. All I know is, it was wednesday and not an overly big deal.
Friday will be a different day. Gonna try not to eat anythingor at least not during treatment. Probably eat dinner before i leave anyway. Still waiting for medical insurance to send me my cards so that I can begin the transplant process again. However there is the issue of only having one car in the family.
Lord?

FDA warns agains EMLA etc..

Check out this link at the FDA website. Apparently skin numbing products can be bad for certain individuals. Our clinic just had an overhaul of policies regarding lidocaine cream. We're not supposed to use plastic wrap any more and instead use gauze. And seeing that gauze will not protect your clothing from getting shmeared, they ask that you use the packet that the gauze came in , to cover the area. Plastic wrap doesn't allow your skin to breath and can increase your body temp in that particular area, which is bad, apparently.
There have been reported cases of patients having irregular heartbeats, cardiac arrest, difficulty breathing and worse.
I usually leave the cream on an hour before treatment and in the open air. I only seal the area with a small taped portion of plastic wrap and only when I'm leaving do I even tape it on. I totally understand the concern. So far the clinic that I go to does not mandate the policy. For now it is just a suggestion.
I know one thing though. If the FDA decides to pull EMLA off the shelves, I'll have to change the name of this blog. SHEESH.