Today is Wednesday May 26th, the fifth day of my latest stint in the hospital. I’ve been getting the photophoreisis every morning since Monday, and it’s been going well.
The procedure itself is pretty boring; the nurse just pops in an IV and you have to lay down for 3 to 4 hours, and not move your right arm much. It’s painless, and I often sleep. From all accounts, the process is effective, however it does work slowly. My billireuben counts have only been going down slightly each day, and today they actually went up, from 6.8 to 7.2. This, apparently, is normal, and just part of the healing process.
Also, I have new information to clarify my last post, where I said that the photophoreisis worked “by magic”: this is the common medical opinion. I am serious; doctors have literally no idea why or how it works. They just discovered a bunch of people with skin conditions eating a particular plant near the nile, getting exposed to the sun, and getting better. They then extrapolated those conditions for other uses, but still have no idea how it does what it does. Kind of weird, kind of scary, and kind of cool. You be the judge.
However, the big thing that is really effecting me side effect wise is water weight from the prednisone. As I’ve mentioned before, one of prednisone’s (many) side effects is the catastrophic retention of water, of which I am effected. Unfortunately, I have only gotten bigger, now sporting at least 20 lbs of excess water weight, putting my weight at 145 lbs (my personal record, far and away). Now, many may think, “Chris is a stick! A sickly stick. Stickly, you might say. 145 lbs is a healthy weight.” To which I reply, “Yes, it very well might be, but only if it’s real.” As it stands, lugging around a ton of water in your thighs, stomach, face and feet is highly uncomfortable. It also makes my penis look like Jabba The Hutt, which is scary enough in and of itself, but now everytime I pee I hear him laughing.
And on that image I leave you!