Hello friends and family 😊
Not much to report on Jimmy today as we wait for his white blood cell, red blood cell, haemaglobin and platelets counts to come up.
I did have a very good chat with Dr Botha who explained quite a few things to me, putting everything in to perspective. So I thought I’d write about this today. It is so refreshing having a doctor to talk to and ask questions. Even when he sees Jimmy and asks how he is feeling, it’s nothing for him to ask 2 more questions so that he can understand exactly where Jimmy is coming from. Maybe I should’ve taken notes 🫣😊.
Jimmy’s blood pressure today was 91/59. Dr Botha said that this is low but Jimmy isn’t showing any symptoms of low blood pressure for now so they will continue to monitor it. Jimmy’s platelets are 28 so he ordered another platelets transfusion. Dr Botha said he is not too concerned with Jimmy’s red blood cell counts right now
but he’s haemaglobin is 8 (normal range is 13.2 to 16.6) so he ordered a blood transfusion for Jimmy as well. Jimmy’s white blood cell count is still 0.1 but the Neupogen injections will sort this out. He said we should see an increase in counts around Thursday or Friday. Once they start increasing they will start to double every day or second day. Jimmy asked why he couldn’t just have one of those very expensive injections to increase his white blood cell count. They jumped to 69 after the 2 injections which is the highest Dr Botha has ever seen 😳. Dr Botha said he did chat to the rep who explained that it is too dangerous and the injections are only used prior to stem cell harvest, meaning they don’t stay in your body.
Jimmy still has diarrhea and only ate breakfast today. We explained to Dr Botha that the amount of food Jimmy gets is more than we eat at home. Doc explained that they monitor his weight, taking it twice a day. They look at his albumin, proteins and electrolytes and these are consistently dropping. He said he is not going to force feed Jimmy and he is happy for him to stay on the intravenous meals and shakes. The only time they will feed him through a tube in his nose is if he starts vomiting. He says he doesn’t want to insert the tube as this will be very uncomfortable once Jimmy has Mucositis (sores due to gut inflamation).
Dr Botha said they picked up something in the culture they took from the Hickman line the day after Jimmy was admitted. They put Jimmy straight on antibiotics and he didn’t spike a temp or show any signs of an infection. So he said he is going to leave Jimmy on these antibiotics for now as he hopes they may prevent any other infections from happening. He also said that all the samples he had sent off for cultures from the bags of stem cells came back all clear.
Dr Botha said by early next week we will know if the graft was a success. Basically he explained to me that they gave Jimmy high doses of chemo prior to each stem cell harvest to get the stem cells as ‘clean’ as possible. He then had another 2 days of heavy chemo to kill anything left. And then they do the stem cell transplant by putting these stem cells back into Jimmy. If the graft is successful it means that the stem cells will go into the bone marrow and will start making more stem cells, white blood cells and red blood cells. At the moment, because his counts have been wiped out, they need to assist Jimmy’s body by giving him blood transfusions, platelet transfusions and Neupogen injections because his body can’t make its own yet.
Jimmy slept most of the time that I was there today again. He said his tummy was feeling like a washing machine, so Dr Botha said he would order some buscopan. He told me that Jimmy’s lack of sleeping at night and the tummy is because Jimmy is feeling very anxious and that’s why he doesn’t want to push the food thing.
So far so good 🙏🏻😇
♥️
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