Wow!

Wow! And I don't mean World of Warcraft wow....

For anyone who has read this blog for a while, you'll remember that we have tried to ignore blood counts. All of us found that we focused too much on those numbers. Poor numbers or a slight drop could ruin an otherwise fine day.

But today's numbers are astonishing!

Hgb > 119 (up from 105 after a transfusion last week and it was regularly dropping to 60-70 when all this started a month ago)
WBC > 3.3 (it was below 1.0 just 10 days ago)
Platelets > 31 (up from 12 just 10 days ago)

Obviously we are thrilled to see this graft back in action. Eric will continue to go in daily for blood tests and fluids. It's a fairly quick visit and should be able to be scheduled around class. I am not sure that there is a definitive answer to what was wrong - but we are liking the results of treatment!

A Short Stay!

Hurray! Eric was 'sprung' yesterday as his fever was gone and he had no signs of infection. The fever he did have combined with the rash and joint pains are classic signs of serum sickness induced by the ATG. Prednisone daily will help diminish those symptoms. Until we are sure what's going on (or not), Eric will drop into the hospital for a daily blood draw and fluid.

Hopefully, that's it for side effects and now we wait for a response from the ATG treatment - sounds like that takes a while (3-9 months?) - but Eric's counts have been somewhat better this week. And that's encouraging and we'll take it.

In other news, Dexter was a brat this weekend at shows in Kingston - he's SO full of himself... Today's judge, bless his heart, saw past the naughty teenage boy and gave him the point. Step One to his championship.

Argh...

Eric spiked a fever last night. For anyone who is post transplant or is immunosuppressed, a fever always means the hospital. He's on two types of round the clock antibiotics to make sure that any infection that may be lurking does not get a chance to grab hold. Usually we never find out what the infection even was or if it was an infection.

Eric's other symptoms - sore joints and a rash on his hands and feet actually point to serum sickness from the ATG. This is a relatively common side effect and the treatment is prednisone. So he started on that too.

Something is working because his fever has dropped considerably, his pulse rate is down and his blood pressure is back up to a normal range.

So he's settled in for a while - no idea how long he will be in hospital. We are just thankful that he is feeling better.

Done and Back to Class

Five days of ATG done. While that's not the end of treatment, it's the end of the hospital stay and Eric is back in class today. Lucky guy escapes the hospital to face a math midterm.....

He has blood tests mid week and will get blood if needed and then a follow up appointment on Friday.

Big shout out to all my colleagues at Convergys who organized a very successful first blood donor clinic last week. Thank you! And they are already busy planning the next one for the end of September. Way to go donors and organizers!

Yet Again!

Another good day. Yesterday and hopefully today, Eric was able to finish the infusion in time to go home for the night - that makes things much better.

And we got a nice surprise today to see his white count inch up a bit. We'll see if it keeps that trend or if it was a oddity. From reading about this treatment, we would not expect to see blood counts recover quickly - it's more of a slow reaction. But - Eric doesn't follow the rules!