zen.org Communal Weblog

Just got the new numbers from the team, things are looking good…his white blood cells are now at 18.6. This is getting closer to “normal”, tho we’re gonna go past normal and wipe ’em all out. His red blood cells are at 5.5, which is quite low and effecting him some. He’s really tired and they don’t want him to get out of bed anymore for any reason, and they have him on the nose oxygen thingie to get his blood oxygen up. Both of which are normal, from what I can tell. He’s to get a transfusion later today of some red blood cells, once his fever goes down some more. He didn’t manage much lunch, but tried valiantly. I was here for his next dose of Daunorubicin, in two giant syringes that go into the central line. He’s now fallen back asleep for a bit, they are about to give him more antibiotics for his fever, as they can’t give him the transfusion until the fever is down some.

He also mentioned that his vision is a bit funny (don’t worry, he told the docs). His skin is very pale, slightly yellowy. I’m glad he’s sleeping, cause the more he sleeps, the faster it will all go for him.

Yesterday he was pleased to find out Ruairi Quinn is minister for education, he’s looking forward to Labour keeping their promise of recognizing Educate Together as a second level patron.

Remember, if you have questions, please ask in the comments of the posts, cause others will have the same ones and we’d love to get everyone informed at the same time.  We also have more than a few medical friends who might be able to answer some on here, or correct if info is wrong.

My dad asked: “This was all caught so so early, like in a beginning stage – how does that play into the medical conversation?”

Part of the name of his type of leukemia is “acute”, which means sudden onset in this case.  When B went into the hosp back in December for the campylobacter (food poisoning), they drew blood then to try to figure out what was going on.  When Dr Kamal came to give us the news on Monday (it might have been Dr Kuan, actually, but no matter) I asked if there was evidence of this in his bloods then.  He said that they went back and looked and there was NO evidence of it.  B was released from hospital then on December 16.  So on that day there was no sign of it.

B did have some unexplained bruising last month, but we just put it off as part of his short term memory fun. That apparently is another symptom of AML, which of course we didn’t know at the time.

As for the medical conversation, I don’t think anyone medical has actually said that we caught this early.  They’ve more said that it’s been caught, and now they’re going to treat it. I will try to ask today, if I am there when the doc is around.  Can anyone add more in the comments?