The "anticlimactic" climactic transplant

So I successfully was transfused Friday with my donor's stem cells. The procedure was quite odd; one lady from the land of frozen cells came up, took the 4 bags of stem cells out of the liquid nitrogen with tongs, and thawed them one by one in a water bath brought into the room for that purpose. It was quite a system, actually. The nurse simply ran the cells into my central line, and when she was finished, another bag was ready. It was pretty cool. And now the donor cells that will grow my new immune systems are swimming around in my body,
What was NOT cool: Earlier that morning about 2 am or maybe 3, it was time for vital signs. This regimen involves a blood pressure reading, a pulse check, an oxygen saturation test, and a temperature reading. Well, at this vitals checkup, I had a fever of about 100.6. This was serious enough that the nurse had to immediately draw blood cultures and send them to the lab.
The good news is that my temp dropped back to normal (or my low version of normal, by 7 a.m
Flash forward now, to my room. The transplant is finished and I'm laying in bed, half comatose and enjoying the fact that all the hubub is over with. So vitals happens again and, to my dismay, the temp reads about 102 ! Scary. and it kept going up, maxing out at about 104 degrees. Yikes!
In the meantime, I was getting the shakes again. Not nearly as bad as a few weeks ago, but bad enough that they wanted to medicate me for the shakes again. In retrospect I think this probably wasn't necessary, and the three shots of demerol stopped the shakes, but also put me out more or less for the whole of Friday afternoon.
By the way, did I tell you I was having bad diarrhea that morning, too? I'll get ot that later.
There was some good news:Dr. Battiwala and Pam, my awesome nurse practitioner stopped by with the results of the blood culture: Strep. The "poo" culture taken friday morning turned out to be CDIFF, one of these bateria that everyone has but those with wacky or weak immune systems are subject to infection. They started me on the appropriate andtibiotics, and even wrote a nurse's judgment dose of Tylenol
Friday was a rough night. Let's just say the diarhhea had a mind (and mess) of its own, the least flattering problem I've had in this whole cancer thing.
Saturday was similarly upsetting. The fever would rise and fall, rise and fall. Dr. Battiwalla suspects that my central line is infected, a guess that makes sense to me. We'll know More Monday, probably, about that particular issue.
Believe it or not there was one more issue Saturday: Painful peeing! Nothing like urinating out blood clots to ruin a guy's day. It got so bad that the nurse eventually decided along with the doctor, that I needed a catheter. Yes, a catheter up the old urethra. Believe it or not the peeing pain was so bad, the catheter insertion pain, though painful was worth the effort. The docs are still not quite sure why I was having the Problem with the peeing pain in the first place2, but this should be more clear in a couple of days.
After all this, I am feeling a lot better today (Sunday) At least things are a bit more under control.