We've been here for twelve days now and for the most part they have been pretty miserable, I'm sorry to say. The mucositis has diminished a bit but won't get better quickly until Alex's white blood cells recover - and that has been slow to happen. In the meantime, he still has a lot of pain in his throat and has been on morphine without interruption. Until yesterday, he has been in bed pretty much the whole time and not terribly comfortable.
Cynthia is just over a bad cold and when you have a cold you are persona non grata in these parts so we felt even a little more cut off.
On Monday we moved back down to ward 2B from 3B and actually into the room we were in for nine days when Alex was first diagnosed back in July. We broke our record. It seems like it has been a long time. I was quite happy as this room is on an outside wall and has a window. The room we were in previously was an interior room. There's something nice about being able to know whether it's rainy or sunny, night or day by looking out the window.
Many weeks ago I had agreed to speak at the annual Crystal Ball which is the BC Childrens Hospital Foundation's annual gala fundraiser which took place this past Thursday. I didn't much feel like it but we had bought a table a while back and a commitment is a commitment so we went. The theme for the even, somewhat ironically I suppose, was "Celebrate." Nurse M, who looked after Samantha when she was a newborn when Pam was first sick and has become a friend of my mother's, came to stay with Alex for everyone's collective peace of mind.
I got through the speech okay and it was good to get out. We had close friends at our table and it was great to see them but it was a bit weird to be "out"! Sensory overload. They raised a hair over a million dollars. Not bad.
Alex has been getting nutrition intravenously since last Friday as he can't eat due to the pain from the mucositis. His weight has come up a touch which is good but yesterday he ate almost a whole piece of chicken quesadilla and had a mug of warm milk. That is the first solid food he has eaten in two weeks. His platelets had jumped up too from about 99 on Thursday to 175 which is almost normal. Neutrophils, the good white blood cells, were still very low at 0.4. He was sitting up and quite chatty - he probably spoke more in half an hour yesterday evening than in the previous week to give you an idea how things have been.
Platelets often seem to lead the way as blood cells recover so I was a bit disappointed today when the neutraphil count was pretty much unchanged. We need that to rebound. But Alex looks better and is eating - sparsely, but eating and that is a big change, hopefully the rebound has finally begun.
The Habs won 3-1 this afternoon - we missed half the game not knowing it was on so early - and they looked good doing it. PK who? A sound thrashing of the Leafs by Boston would be nice. And then the Oil host St. Louis and will hopefully soften them up before they arrive in Vancouver for tomorrow's game. That's our plan for today.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.