News from the Front Line...

Max finally started showing signs of being a transplant patient this past Wednesday. He came down with a fever mostly likely caused by a bacteria already living in his body. This was expected as he has no white blood cells to protect him from anything. He started antibiotics Thursday that will run over the next ten or more days.

His appetite stopped Wednesday night as well and he was hooked up to IV nutrition Thursday. The IV nutrition will run 24 hours per day for as long as needed, maybe up to 3 or 4 weeks. The main reason he is not eating at all, aside from having little appetite caused by the chemo, is because the mouth, throat and stomach sores have started and it is too painful to swallow anything and worse to have it in his stomach. The pain is great enough to warrant Morphine as his pain medication and he is on a constant drip now.

He received a platelet transfusion on Friday, red blood Saturday, and will need platelets again tomorrow, Monday.

Max is very tired and is napping 4 to 5 hours each day. Today he fell asleep at 1:30 and still isn't awake at 7:15. What this means for sleeping tonight is unknown!

He is still in pretty good spirits considering all his pain. Today, Sunday, Hannah came by for a visit. She had been to a girly birthday party and had her toenails painted. Max was so excited for her to show him he actually sat up, got a little too wound up, coughed, hurt his throat, and promptly had to lie back down again. He's very happy to see new faces and makes it a point of letting us know how much he likes his visits with Hannah and Nana & Tata. I'm sure he would really enjoying seeing more people, but it's just not possible. Soon enough!

Good news today was the comment on the bottom of his Complete Blood Count (CBC) sheet: 1 mononuclear cell. This means that something good is happening in his bone marrow and that we should start to see his counts rising in a few days. The stem cells are engrafting! His white count was also up from 0.1 to 0.3 which isn't huge the scheme of things but it is progress!

You wouldn't think it, but time passes pretty fast here. There are constant updates on Max's fever, CBCs, transfusions, helping Max pee or poop, IVs beeping, nurses coming in to make the beeping stop!, nurses taking vitals, etc. Before you know it the day is done and you can't wait to fall asleep on the chair, which is a comfy looking chair that folds out into a slightly tilted bed. It's really a hideous torture devise cleverly disguised in mauve faux leather. Tonight I'm trying a camp cot with my eggcrate on it. We'll see which is worse!