Wednesday, 18th February

Day 48 - Stem Cell Transplant

What a difference in Jimmy today.  He was much more alert and awake more of the time too.  Unfortunately we are having catheter problems again as a result of the blood in his urine.  It keeps clotting and forming a blockage in the pipe and then the urine by-passes the pipe.  He was getting very frustrated with this today.

With regards to the  virus that he has, which is causing the blood in his urine, they have sent a specimen off the lab but Dr Fine says in takes a couple of days to get the results.  His temperature never went above 36.8 today and they also took him off the oxygen as he is maintaining a level of 95 without it.  He needed another platelet and a blood transfusion today but Dr Fine says this is normal as the Neupogen injections are suppressing these counts from coming up.  It isn't anything they are worried about as even when it is time for him to be discharged, he will just continue to go to the chemo clinic for the transfusions until these counts reach the correct level.  His white blood cell count jumped to 3.6 this morning which we are very happy about.  Ecstatic actually!

Jimmy's mouth is still sore and he is still on morphine for the pain but his tongue is looking a lot better.  There were moments in the day when he spoke absolute sense and others where it was definitely 'morphine talk' again.  After rubbing cream onto his back, arms and legs which are peeling (also from the chemo) he asked me if the room was full of people.  I told him that it was just me and him there and he said it feels like there are a lot more people in the room.

He was quite rude to some of the staff today, which I found extremely embarrassing.  At one stage I actually told him to just try and relax and let them do their jobs as they know what they are doing.  He was moaning at them and telling them how to do their jobs and complaining about the order in which they were doing things like cleaning and rinsing his mouth.  But later on, when I was in the first little room off Jimmy's room and the door was closed the sister told me not to stress about it because it is the morphine.  She said they are quite used to it and don't take any notice.  Apparently one of the other patients swore at Prof in Afrikaans and told the male nurses and sisters they are all moffies. 

Jimmy drank quite a bit of liquids today and even managed about 5 soup spoons on soup at about 2pm.

I left early today to be home by 4pm so that I could meet up with Loren and Emma at school and support the indoor hockey match.  It's so nice to have them sleeping over tonight and they'll be back in two days for the weekend which I am really looking forward to, specially now that I know that Jimmy is a little stronger and I can spend a little more time with my girls.

When I left Jimmy and said goodbye and I love you like I do every day he replied to say I love you too and drive safe.  Just one more sign that my Jimmy is slowly coming back.