The last couple of days have been “interesting”. I was never quite able to get to sleep before my transplant, and just attributed the insomnia to excitement/anticipation. Well, Day 0 ended and I was still unable to go to sleep. During the day, I also started having issues with diarrhea, so I was pretty miserable. I also had a few moments when I felt down just thinking about the long road ahead. Night came, and I was STILL unable to sleep. I had a difficult time falling asleep, then as soon as I would feel like I had fallen asleep I would wake up and restart the cycle. During the times when I did fall asleep, I remembered having the strange, psychedelic-type dreams again. When I talked to the BMT team in the morning, they indicated that this might be a side effect of Prograf, an IV drug that I’m receiving for anti-rejection. We’ll continue to monitor.

By the night of Day 1, I was extremely sleep-deprived and cranky. There were so many little annoyances that were impacting my ability to sleep that gave a rant to every nurse that came in. There is a forced-air blowing sound that I don’t remember hearing in my other rooms. There was also the wall-mounted call monitor that would not dim (it was like a flashlight shining in my eyes). I nurse figured out that there was a device in the blood pressure machine that is left in my room which made the monitor think a nurse was still in the room. She disabled the battery and the light finally when out. I spent from about 10 pm until around 12:30 am trying to fall asleep. I then when into a sleep/wake cycle until around 4, during which I was have the very vivid dreams. I eventually got a little restful sleep after that. Still not good sleep, but I felt a little better when I woke up.