Another Update (Habubrat)

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a pleasant holiday as we head into 2009, which we probably all hope goes better than this past one! :) Dave is in Day #5 (Day #0 being the day of the transplant). He is right on schedule with how he is supposed to be progressing. His White Blood Count (WBC) is bottoming out and is currently at 0.02 and we expect it may get a bit lower or at least stay there over the next couple of days and then begin the climb back up to normal. He had blood transfusion today as his Hemoglobin was low, which they anticipated yesterday and ordered it so no waiting for that. His platelets are also low so they gave him some of those too. He is still on the nausea infuser that they send hooked up to him for 24 hours each day. Its like a baby bottle with a balloon inside that from the pressure of the IV line in his port, sucks the medicine out over 24 hour period to keep his nausea at bay. I have the same thing in the frig for antibiotics. If his fever gets over 101 degrees then I'm to unhook the nausea infuser, flush his line with the saline solution and hook up the antibiotic infuser, give him two tylenol, take his temp every 30 min, record it and get him in at 7 am the next morning. I only need to call if fever keeps climbing or other complications. Dave looks nervous when the nurses show me how. Hahaha! Our children came down from Univ of Maryland and we had a wonderful week with them. Dave slept through most of it, and then last night, somehow, he managed to challenge them to a rousing, loud and lively game of dominoes. I can't tell you how joyful it was to hear them all in the kitchen picking on each other and carrying on with unfettered enthusiasm. I was sad to take them to the airport this morning at 5 am! But they have things to do, winter classes, and my daughter has to leave tomorrow for Swim/Dive Camp. She's a diver for the University. I'm glad they are busy and doing well. Both got outstanding grades this semester. Lots to be grateful for. We are hoping that we could actually be going home in a week! I can't believe it! We'll be very close to our predicted time here, even with the down time between collection and transplant. Dave is doing extremely well considering and of course its all relative. When you see patients who can't walk or get admitted because of infection and so on, you realize, as bad as it seems personally, you are doing OK in the big scheme of things and its a blessing. We don't yet know what will have to happen when we are discharge from the Transplant Clinic back over to the Myeloma Clinic to see the doc. We know they will give us a pile of instructions and send stuff home to the oncologist at home. We are just unsure if we will have anymore tests to do or what the process entails. We will learn about it all as we go. Anyway, thought you were in need of another update. Thanks for all your good words and support! Onward! Best, Lori