Bald Again

I am quite the sight these days. Bald (again), my 12 year-old glasses (can't wear my contacts due to risk of infection and dry eyes), swollen cheeks like I have the mumps, tubes coming out of my central line in my chest, and leads hooked up to me to continuously monitor my heart rate. I have to wear a mask when I leave my room to walk around the unit. However, I do wear my own clothes. No need to complete the look with a hospital gown!
We had a bit of a scare the other morning. My heart was racing. Really racing. Lower 200's. Normals is 60's-70's. Granted, they do expect it to raise when your body is going through all the stress of this, but maybe in the 90's. So, I'm fairly nervous as the heart is, from what I hear, a pretty important organ. I may or may not have cried as the doctor was talking to me. Suddenly, a slew of people came into my room. One introduces herself as an ICU doctor. She told me they were going to inject a drug into my line that would slow my heart waaaaay down, and that I might even feel it stop for a quick second. The idea was to shock my heart into resetting itself. And, actually, she said if it didn't work, they'd take me to the ICU and shock it. You can imagine that I was feeling completely calm at this time. First you're killing off my bone marrow, now you're stopping my heart?! Cory wasn't here yet. There is a really nice couple a few rooms down from us, and she is also doing the transplant. I knew that they were also members of our church and I asked if they could get him to give me a priesthood blessing.  They wanted to stop my heart first, so I had to wait ( although it was for this very reason I wanted to have a blessing). In went the medicine. It felt weird. My whole body tingled...but it worked. No need to shock my little friend. I am, however, now hooked up to a telemetry unit that allows " them" to always see what my heart is doing. Cardiology came by, and they'll keep an eye on me. My heart is still fast, but hasn't gotten near 200 again. Cory got here just after our friendly hospital neighbor gave me the blessing. He missed all the fun. Totally freaked me out.
Besides that, I'm just experiencing the expected chemo/ radiation symptoms. I'm only able to drink my calories...there's too much going on in my mouth that makes eating, and even talking, painful. You know what simple thing I miss? Enjoying a drink of water. Anyone who knows me knows that I drink a lot of water. With nothing being pleasant these days with my mouth, taking a drink of water is an ordeal.
I know it's from all your prayers that I'm even able to drink my calories. I just really want to avoid receiving nutrition through my line. I've received a couple of platelet transfusions, but my hemoglobin has been fine, so no blood transfusions yet. My neutrophil count (the white blood cells that fight infection) is a nice, round 0. No immune system whatsoever.
I'm going to shuffle around the unit for a bit for some exercise. Thank you always for your prayers, love, support, generous donations, cards, thoughts, and other acts of service that are literally carrying our family through this! And thank you a million times to my parents, brothers and sisters and in- laws who are taking such good care of my family and me. Couldn't have asked for better. Family is IT, my friends. What it's all about.