Wednesday, 4th February

Day 36 - Stem Cell Transplant

I am starting to see slow little steps of progress.

When I got to the hospital this morning I was quite shocked to see how bloated Jimmy was.  He looked like he had put on 5kg, this is as a result of the fluids he is getting.  So during the morning they slowed this down and then a bit later they gave him something to flush someof the fluids in his body.  There is quite a fine line between the antibiotics and fluids and getting the right amount in and out.   They also inserted a catheter.  He came off oxygen for about an hour but had to put him back on again.  His temperature was still 39+.

Dr Fine came to check on him and said she could here fluid in his lungs and wasn't sure if this was due to all the fluids in his body or from a possible infection and they would only know once some of the fluids had been flushed from his system but they were treating it as an infection to be on the safe side.  His blood pressure is still very low too so now he is not allowed up at all.  Dr Fine said that he should start feeling better in the next 3 days.  Let's hold thumbs.

He slept quite a bit today again but he was definitely a little bit more talkative in between.  I think he is starting to drive the sister crazy with all his questions.  He has a cuff permanently on him arm and his blood pressure and pulse etc is automatically read every 30 minutes.  At one stage the Velcro came lose so the cuff wouldn't inflate properly.  He buzzed for the sister and when she came in he asked her if this was normal.  I told him it doesn't mean anything, the Velcro had come lose.  But I think he keeps evaluating himself with these questions.

After lunch time his temperature came down to 38 and seems to have stabilised there.  And his white blood cell count is still on the climb, we at 0.8 today.  Here's hoping for a big fat 1 tomorrow.

I left the hospital at about 3:30 today because my girls are here for the night.  I am now in such a rut of hospital, home, paperwork and then bed that this afternoon actually felt like a public holiday.

And then on top of everything else going on at the moment I had a visitor on the property last night at 11:30.  I was just about to go out on to the stoep and switch off the lights and close up when I heard someone down at the end of our property where the carport is.  Our staffie had run outside and barked at the top drive way about 10 minutes prior to this.  I phone ADT and it took me 10 minutes to explain to lady that I was from San Michel which is in Cape Town and not Johannesburg like she kept asking me.  Then she wanted to know how long we had members of ADT.  I told her about 8 years and could she please hurry up as I am alone at home.  The bakkies with the patrollers were here within 2 minutes of me putting the phone down.  They spent about 30 minutes searching the property and I also called them to go and look upstairs because both bathroom windows were open so they closed them for me and checked all the bedrooms.  They even took ladders out their vehicles and searched all the big trees in our road and said that they would patrol the road during the night for me.  I got into bed and thought I would never fall asleep but I did, with Keira our Staffie on the bed next to me.

Today Maureen went through to Builders Warehouse and bought some security lights and arrived here with her son Garrick and a ladder and drill and put up lights all around the property for me.  A huge big thank you Maureen.  I am truly blessed with amazing friends xx

I know I will sleep safe and sound tonight with security lights and my girls to keep me company.  And my wish is that Jimmy too has a good nights sleep.

Tuesday, 3rd February

Day 35 - Stem Cell Transplant

Today turned out to be worse and even tougher than yesterday.  My poor man.....

Jimmy has continued to spike temperatures all day, going up to 40.1 at a stage.  We still have the warning of this coming on when his whole body starts to shake.  The diarrhoea seems to have eased off a bit but I was told tonight that this will probably come back again.  They inserted a looooooong tube into his nose and down into his stomach to feed him as he has not eaten since yesterday and only managed one shake this morning.  In spite of not eating Jimmy is feeling very bloated.  They are feeding him at a rate on 10ml every hour.  This will go up.  Due to the high temperatures and his heart over working (every time he spikes a temperature his pulse rate goes through the roof) they now have him on oxygen permanently, this is another 2 tubes also though his nose.  They upped his antibiotics today to try and stop the temperature spikes.  He only urinated once today and they are now worried about his kidneys.  They tested this urine and found traces of ketones which could indicate another infection so he has to sip water as often as possible.  They attached another machine to his pole today which measures his CVP.  If I understand correctly this measures the amount of blood returning to his heart and they do this reading before and after each bag of whatever is transfused into him.  This is probably the wrong terminology but half you wouldn't know that anyway ;) .  Jimmy has now started to get bone pain in his pelvis and the long bones in his legs which is a result of the Neupogen injections.  In between temperature spikes he is sleeping quite a lot, although not very deeply.  He says he isn't sleeping at night and the sister told me they can't give him a sleeping tablet because his blood pressure is dangerously low and the side effect of the sleeping tablet is lowered blood pressure.  I apologise if this all sounds a bit matter of fact and bit point form-ish but there is just so much going on at the moment.  And at last a little bit of good news - his white blood count is now 0.4, this was 0.3 yesterday which means those stemmies are grafting.

A big thanks to all you guy friends who have sent him messages to his phone.  He hasn't even looked at his phone in 2 days so I read them all to him today and he still managed a smile.

Stan and Michelle printed a huge photo of the two of us standing on a wooden walkway in the forest in Natures Valley in January and gave it to me with strict instructions that it had to go on the wall where Jimmy can see it.  Thanks so much, me mentioned twice what a nice photo it is.  In fact the second time I thought he was hallucinating because I had forgotten it was up there.



It really is starting to look like spaghetti junction with all the tubes and bags