Day 8

Vlad is feeling generally rotten today. His throat and mouth are starting to get the dreaded sores from the chemo. He's not in any pain, thankfully. And he's not hungry, but he ate some breakfast at my urging. He was going to take a short walk, even though his body is screaming at him to lay down and rest. They want stem cell transplant patients to fight the fatigue; it helps them get well faster and helps keep pneumonia at bay.

He is scheduled for a platelet transfusion today, as expected. His numbers are WBC 0.1, RBC 2.93, hemoglobin 9.2, platelets 11. He also had a blood draw from his arm, not the line, to measure how the Tacrolimus, the main anti-rejection drug, is doing. They may change the dosage depending on what they find in the blood. This happens every Mon-Wed-Fri while he's on the drug. He'll be on it for awhile.

He's also on IV antibiotics and I would guess also an antifungal and an antiviral, though I'm not certain. He also gets fluids with saline and potassium-magnesium. It's quite a tree of IVs. They all have them; all the patients on the floor. The nurses decorated one IV tree with green garland and ornaments. It stands by the elevators. Pretty funny.

Last night, I took up some snowflake lights. We spread them across the window sill. They look very nice. Also found some of those fake votive candles, with a light bulb that simulates a flame. Those were surprisingly the coolest thing. There's something very calming about candles. He has enjoyed them very much.

His skin around the CVC line got very red and a little infected a couple of days ago. The Infusion Therapy team has been changing the dressing daily since then. (Normally the nurse changes it weekly.) The IT nurse was hours behind because of emergencies but when she finally got there, she was awesome. Because I got "trained" in October on changing the dressing, I'm very interested in watching the real nurses change it. I'll be doing it again when he comes home. She did a more thorough cleaning than is usually done, it must have been an infection protocol. And she had some tips for us. She also said the sample culture is negative for bacteria so far. She was definitely worth the wait.