Monday, 23rd February

Day 53 - Stem Cell Transplant

Today was a bit of a funny day with not much information about the Pneumonia and generally up and down.

Jimmy had some porridge this morning for breakfast but when he had soup for lunch he brought it up so was put back on nil per mouth for the rest of the day.  We rinsed out his mouth, first with water and bicarbonate of soda, then antiseptic mouth rinse and then the coconut oil.  The coconut oil definitely seems to be helping his mouth sores.  I managed to convince him to sit in the lazy boy which he did for 4 hours.  Although he slept the whole time the main thing is getting him in a more upright position for his lungs.  It's quite a rigmarole  getting him the 3 steps from the bed to the chair as for one he is very weak and the other problem is that he now has two poles full of drips and bags and medicine.  There are at least 8 pipes leading into him somehow or another.  I have figured out how to change the plugs on the different machines when their batteries go flat so this is a help as not all the wires can reach the plugs from the lazy boy so I rotate them.

I chatted to Dr Fine this morning.  Although Jimmy had x-rays yesterday there wasn't a radiologist available to look at the results.  Prof had a look at them yesterday morning and suggested a CT scan today.  But this morning Dr Fine said the radiologist would have a look at them and decide if it was necessary for a CT scan.  The other problem is that if there is too much fluid on his lungs nothing more would show up on the CT scan so they were waiting to hear from the radiologist as to basically if she thought a CT scan was necessary, or whether they had to get some more fluid out his system first and Dr Fine was of the opinion that the latter would probably be what they would do and then he would have another x-ray to see if there was any difference before they booked him for a CT scan.  So they gave him the medication to get rid of fluids but then he had to have some platelets and a blood transfusion.  The blood transfusion takes about 3 hours so they could only carry on with the meds to get rid of the fluid once the blood transfusion was finished.  When I left just after 5 they were still busy with this so I would think that if he does have to have another x-ray it will only be in the morning.

He was also back on oxygen again this morning when I arrived but he came off this during the course of the morning and they only nebulised him once today.  There was quite a bit of blood in his urine again but this seems to come and go.  Dr Fine also explained that the temperatures that he is spiking are still as a result of the sores in his mouth which I have to say are looking a little better each day.

I think there will be quite a change in Jimmy once he can come off the morphine or at least down to a much lower dose.  He is still not very talkative but he does talk a little every now and then which is better than he has been in a while.

Let's hope that we are nearing a turning point some time very soon.