Puffy

Somebody is puffy!  Hopefully nothing ominous, but they gave him some diuretics, and nobody seems worried.

Maybe it's all the blood products we keep putting in him. Yesterday red cells, today more platelets.  Supposedly this is normal, that everything keeps dropping too low and we have to bump him up until he starts making his own.  I am getting used to it, but I prefer platelets, because it doesn't look like blood and so feels less alarming.  Also, the red cells seem to cause more discomfort; Samson gets all red and splotchy and wiggly during and after the red, even though we treat him with benadryl.  He eventually gets so frustrated he starts screaming.  The red infusion takes several hours, so this is a bummer.  Right now platelets are going in but he is enjoying a benadryl snooze.

Today is day 8 post-transplant, and as we would expect, no sign of engraftment by Harriet's cells yet.  It should be at least another week, but nurses have told me it's possible to see something as soon as 10 days, so let's start hoping for positive signs this weekend.  A positive sign would be an increased white blood cell count. Today the lab sheet shows it as .1, which means 100.  (Low normal is 4500.)  I actually don't think they do zeros, so we don't have anywhere to go but up.  It has been .2 during the last week, except for .4 one day, which was probably just a lab blip.  So we are looking for sustained gains.  A couple days of .5 (500) or above in a row, and we will know we are getting somewhere.

I have been warned, because they do a lot of warning me around here, that even if we go up, we may maddeningly go down a few times before the up "takes."  As you may recall, neutrophils are the important white cells for fighting bacteria, and he doesn't have any of those right now. When the overall white count goes up, we start counting neutrophils again and what we are looking for is a few days above 500 ANC (absolute neutrophil count), which would make us officially engrafted, which would put us on the way home, barring other complications such as infection or graft versus host disease.  Also, the children can come visit us here in the room as soon as he hits an ANC of 500 just one time. So if you want to put in some specific prayers and good thoughts, think neutrophils, lots of them.

I don't want to be delusional, but I do feel positive.  Aaron feels awful that Samson is going through such itchy rashy tummy-ache misery.  That may be because Aaron is a smidge softer hearted than me.  But as Samson is surviving this, even with some pretty major discomfort, I am so grateful he is not on oxygen, so grateful he doesn't have terrible sores, so grateful that so many bad things have not overtaken us.  As a result, I feel ever more hopeful that we have actually done something here to help him, to cure him, so that he and all of us have a life to look forward to together.  I always say about this past hard year that it was the best year of my life.  How could it not be; it's the only year we had all four kids. But so many months in the hospital, so much scrambling to make it all work, was exhausting and stressful.  To think that one day I could have all four of my children together, at home, healthy, it's almost too delicious to imagine.  It gives me the shivers! Especially if I get to go back to work. Ha ha.

Somebody puffy is waking up now, ready to tackle the day.  He is so amazing.