Well I’m going back into the hospital!
Turns out the oral prednisone I was taking at home didn’t really work the way the IV drip prednisone did, so my billireuben went up. I was actually supposed be admitted today, but the room is still not ready as of 8:00pm (and probably won’t be until 11:00 or 12:00), so I’m just going to go in first thing tomorrow morning.
They will be doing another procedure on top of the prednisone that is apparently very effective called photophoriesis. What will happen is they will hook me up to this machine through an IV, and filter out a small amount of my white blood cells, then put the rest back in me. Then they radiate those white blood cells, pump them back into my body, and then hit them with artificial UV sunlight, seemingly for no logical reason.
However, apparently this process reverses GVHD by damaging the T-cells that cause the GVHD, and not the ones that fight it. My only guess on the science of this is that it must be heavily based in voodoo.
Anyways, they will start me on this on monday, and continue for 3 or 4 days, depending on how well I respond, at which point I could be discharged. Hopefully I’ll only be in the big house for a week, maybe less.
Also, the photophoreisis should help me get off the prednisone quicker.
After I’m discharged, I will still need to go to outpaitent for photophoreisis probably at least 3 times a week, and slowly decrease. Chances are I’ll be doing this for at least a month, and I’ll probably still be on some dosage of prednisone after that. So that’s the update for now, other than I had really good indian food today.
More when I don’t have to pee as bad.