Bruised lumbar, bad headaches and 100 miles an hour

To recap the past couple of days:
Tuesday
Dr. Wang wanted to give me a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) due to some blurry vision and slight headachyiness I had been having. One of her fellows -- kind of like a fancy resident -- started the procedure. He really botched it. After a bout a half hour of him poking into my spinal column, missing, and poking again, sense took over and Dr. Wang finished the procedure. A spinal tap isn't all that comfortable of a job to begin with. The doctors poke a big needle into your spinal column and suck out spinal fluid. By the end of all the poking and prodding, I was pretty sore in my lower back, and seriously pissed off that I was some advanced student's guinea pig.

Wednesday
About 3 a.m., my nurse came in and told me I needed to have a platelet transfusion. For those of you who have ever been in the hospital, you will understand that these middle-of the-night interruptions are fairly routine. I've had platelets before, so it was no big deal. The nurse hooked me up, and, in about 10 minutes my central line area started to itch. Then my chest started to break out. And my legs, knees, feet, my face, everywhere. Bright red and white hives, hives so thick on my kneecap there were peaks and valleys and craters. I buzzed the nurse in, and he rather freaked. The charge nurse came in and said she would page a doctor. They knew exactly what to give to stop the breakouts, but couldn't administer it without a prescription. The nurse had to page the on call doctor THREE TIMES before getting a response. Meanwhile, I was really suffering. Big red welts and hives all over my body. itching and itching and itching like hundreds of bug bites. FINALLY, a half hour after I buzzed the nurse, they finally brought in intravenous benadryl, and the hives went away within 10 minutes.
How does this happen? Even though I have had platelets before, sometimes something in someone elses blood, even something they ate, will react with the donee, causing breakouts. For all future platelet transfusions I will be given both benadryl and hydrocortzone before hand, to prevent any possibility of reaction happening again.

Later Wednesday, I woke up with a splitting headache. What I found out is that this headache was from the lumbar puncture the day before. The doctor explained that this sometimes happens, and I should lie flat in bed all day long. FUN. True to her word, the minute I got op, sat up or went to the bathroom, I started to get headachy again. Though i took pain pills, they didn't seem to help...the only thing that helped was lying down.

Meanwhile, the doctors were actively pursuing a Bone Marrow donor for me, even though they aren't sure I will actually need a bone marrow transplant. It is quite a long process finding a donor, and if they waited to start searching for a donor when I needed one, it would be too late. I met with a financial counselor from the hospital, who explained a crappy thing about insurance companies. Though insurance will fully cover a bone marrow transplant (a couple of hundred thousand dollars), it would NOT cover the required testing of donors in the nationwide databank of typed bone marrow donors. Cost of finding a good match, the lady said with a straight face, are between $3000 and $30000. That's quite a range. So in the meantime the financial counselor lady gave me a financial aid package, which i need to fill out and hopefully will help me get grants and stuff to pay and discount for the search. The doctors have stressed that they will make a decision about the transplant before they start all the expensive testing on donors, and will narrow the search as much as possible so the costs are minimal. It's still a bit scary, and not something I really wanted to have to deal with when I was already feeling crappy.

Thursday
The same headaches and bed rest apply today. Trish, the nurse practitioner who is a good patient advocate, met with me, and I gave her an earful about the spinal tap. I told her that no one but an attending doctor or neurologist will be doing any spinal taps on me. I feel like my headaches must be related to the "fellow"'s botched job. Though she said that probably wasn't the case, Trish said she understood and my wishes would be shared with Dr. Wang.
Later on I met with Dr. Wang. She apologized for the botched job on tuesday, and said that she had thought the fellow would have been able to do better than he did. She guaranteed me that no one but an attending doctor or a surgeon would do the spinal tap in the future. This made me feel better. She also said part of my issue with the headaches is that I kind of gave up on the pain medication. I am supposed to now take my 10 mg of oxycodon every four hours, and the cumulative effect of those doses should knock out the headaches. She also said that right now my blood counts are SUPER low, so the headaches are a combination of the crappiness I should be feeling, and the lumbar puncture to which I am apparently very sensitive. Her orders were to "stop going 100 miles and hour" relax and lay flat for another day. That is really really hard for me to do!

Holy cow, that is a long entry. It's been a wierd couple of days. Hope everyone is doing ok at home. All in all, I am fine, but this headache crap has made me quite cranky.