J. Michael Jones

I wasn’t going to post today, but I had some good news (for a change). I will say, and the day is not over yet, that today is my best day in weeks. For one, the effects of chemo has past. Also, I don’t know until I get labs in the morning, I feel my renal-failure toxins are down to normal. My constant neurological symptoms are much better as of this morning. I will get labs in the morning and my prayer is that my toxins are normal and stay normal via my own kidney function.

I feel stronger today and did some exercising besides doing the dishes. I hope to get out to the beach for a moment.

Something I had not talked about (didn’t want to scare my kids) but I developed tachycardia after plasmapheresis on Monday night. It was so bad that my one day off this week from treatments, I ended up spending the morning in the ER. My heart rate was 120. They could not find the cause, although they were concerned about a pulmonary embolism. However, they could not look for that without doing more damage to my kidneys via dye.

So, this high heart rate continued for reasons that were not clear, but there were some serious concerns that either the disease or the chemo was damaging my heart. I’ve never had a problem with my heart before.

But for some reason, my chemo side effects and the tachycardia went away during the night, so I think I’m out of the woods for that concern.

When they put these horrible (but life-saving) tubes in my chest, they warned me about keeping it clean (having to wipe my body down every day with anti-bacteria scrubs) and dry. So dry means “no hot tubing!” I love our hot tub. So today I had the strength to try and come up with a improvised way to to it. It was a cut off sweat shirt under my red raincoat, rolled up an sealed at the bottom with a belt. It was glorious and my obnoxious tubes into my chest stayed clean and dry.

Pray for good labs tomorrow. I want to stop dialysis and get these tubes out of my chest. They are painful and make me feel like a cyborg. Mike