Week 37

I had some really good blood test results last week which gave me great hope that things are moving in the right direction.

Last Tuesday the Red Blood Cells were 93 and had only dropped to 90 by Friday.

The White blood cells moved up from 3.2 on Tuesday to 6.7 by Friday.

And the platelets have continued to rise, being 48 on Tuesday but 60 by Friday.  This is one of the key indicators that the marrow is working, producing blood cells so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

The neutrophils moved from just 0.8 on Tuesday up to 4.3 on Friday which is back in the normal range.  This is without GCSF support so once again this is giving me more hope.

The magnesium levels were stable at 0.76 as was the Creatinine at 118 (being close to the normal range).

But of course things change quickly in  this game and by Tuesday of this week the red blood cells had dropped to 81.  I needed two units of blood.

The other counts had stayed up pretty well with platelets at 58, neutrophils 2.5 and Creatinine 119.

As I keep saying I can only take one day at a time.  Last Friday I was feeling pretty good but by Saturday I had gone downhill significantly having developed severe diarrhoea once again (my last bout was at the end of February). Unfortunately with my current gut situation this is not something that tends to rectify itself in a few days.  It is on-going.  The doctors have prescribed Flagyl but won’t know if this will be effective until a sample is analysed by pathology.  They think I may well have the ‘C Diff’ infection.  I will know more by Friday.

I needed a large dose of Potassium on Tuesday as the diarrhea tends to deplete this electrolyte.  This took 3 hours to transfuse.

Jan is now in the US with Claire and Lachy for Dougall’s graduation ceremony.  They certainly turn on the activities at Yale with 3 full days of celebrations.  I am missing Jan dearly but we all agreed it was important for her to make the trip and it will also give her a much needed break from my full time care.

In the meantime my lovely parents have made the trip down to Melbourne to help out.  My mother has jumped into the caring role straight away and it has been fantastic having their company.  I think it would be very difficult if you had to go through this yourself.

The people you see

When walking around Docklands with my parents we bumped into Gail and Peter Crozier from Wagga.  They were down in Melbourne for a few days and by co-incidence our paths crossed.

I also bumped into Jeremy Twigg on the weekend as he and a friend were finishing off a 100km bike ride.  Funny how you can be in Melbourne with 5 million people and still randomly run into people you know.