First of all, the good news. Dad's blood results yesterday were showing improvement. He finally has some neutrophils (ANC). They are at 500. Normal is over 1000. The other good thing was he finally hit a whole number on his white cell count (1.0). All of that is good.
Mom was called up to the hospital earlier this morning (8:00am) because Dad had a rough night and was really agitated. He even told me "I'm crazy". He was very confused and didn't know why he was there. He even got himself up last night and was wandering the halls upset. That whole episode really had Mom upset too. Apparently, his nurse, Pam, was very compassionate and took good care of him, though, because by the time I got there, he was feeling better and he went and thanked her at the nurses station. The end result of this episode was they stopped the pain meds that they were doing through the IV - they were continual. They're hoping that backing off that and letting him just use the dispenser that he pushes a button for to control pain, will bring his brain back. He had a headache when I left, so I am thinking it's a little withdrawal from the meds not going in him.
Dad said "I just want to go home. I miss my kitty." and Mom had him restate what has to happen for that to materialize. He knew what he had to do. He tried to eat some scrambled eggs, but he just couldn't swallow them, so he spit them out. "A" for effort!
Mom sat and talked with me for a few minutes in the lobby and whereas I had been thinking he would go to a "consolidation" phase after this (providing he gets to remission), she said they will be doing an actual bone marrow transplant down the road. So potentially, well get Dad home in 2-3 weeks, he'll stay there a few weeks, then have another biopsy done, after which, depending on the results, we'll be starting to consider the transplant. It was a lot to absorb today.
I know my Mom is getting worn out. She said, "Starting out with this, I had no idea what we were getting into."
No comments:
Post a Comment