Monday, 9th March

Day 67 - Stem Cell Transplant

We had the best news today!

At 8:30am Jimmy sent me a message to say that I need to get to the hospital earlier this morning because they are moving him to high care and I need to pack his bags. This is the best news I have had in a long time.  So off I rushed to pack up all his things.  Three bags after being in isolation for 49 days.  Half of it I packed and put in the car to bring home because I seriously doubt he is going to use any of it in the next week if he hasn't for the last almost 2 months.

This is one door we are closing, never to open again.

They put a mask on him and wheeled him through to high care while I went down to the car and the porter took his laptop bag and personal things and then I came back up and met them in high care.  Jimmy was supposed to be booked into one of the isolation wards in high care but he begged Mr Brown to be in the big ward and Mr Brown kindly obliged.  There are 2 other patients there at the moment that we know from the chemo clinic so it is quite nice for Jimmy to see them again.  They are both in with Pneumonia.

Goodbye isolation

So now Jimmy has to get up as much as possible and build his strength back.  He is allowed to take a walk with me down the passage outside high care as long as he has a mask on and during the quiet times.  He has to get up to go the to toilet too.  Dr Fine explained that his body is using all its resources to build up all these extra cells and he should be eating more than normal to keep up with the demand when in fact he is hardly eating at all.  He has lost another kg.  She said it's not as important for him to weigh what he did when he came in (as long as he doesn't go any lower) as they look at the trend but the problem is that the trend at the moment says he is losing weight.  If he doesn't spike a temperature by midnight then they will take down the antibiotics tomorrow and he has to go 2 full days without getting a temperature or else they will put him back on the antibiotics again.  They are also going to stop 2 of his nausea meds tomorrow to see if this might help his appetite.

Some more good news is that his white blood cells are slowly coming up.  They were 1.6 this morning (normal is 4 to 11).  Dr Fine is over the moon with his platelets and HGB count.  His platelets are 60 (normal is 150 to 400) and his HGB  is 9 (normal is 13 to 18).  She says this is very good news because they were expecting him to have to come back daily for platelets and blood transfusions once he gets discharged. She says it is no uncommon to come back for months for platelets but Jimmy has had a sudden rise in these two since Saturday.

It's still difficult to say when he will come home as they will monitor him from tomorrow without antibiotics and the nausea meds but the rest is up to Jimmy now.  It really is very difficult because I know he is feeling down but he needs to be strong now and push forward. I sometimes feel like he has given up but maybe it is difficult for him to get out of this kind of rut that he is in.  49 Days is an awfully long time to be in hospital, away from home comforts and the people you love.