Day 33: Building Up

I'm way behind. I've been so tired. It's been difficult to do anything but sleep. It probably doesn't help that I'm not eating anything at all. Everything makes me nauseous.

The doctors say it's graft-vs.-host disease, just minor, but it took a while to eliminate all the possible infections and start treating it. So the minor steroid they started with didn't do any good at all. They just started a stronger steroid today. We'll see how that does.

The main doctor switches every two weeks. So day before yesterday I had Dr. Inglehardt. Yesterday and today I got Dr. Kassim. He was a lot more pushy about getting up and walking, which I have been doing, though not nearly as much as before. I've been doing 7 or 8 laps (about a quarter mile) just once or twice a day. Dr. Kassim always throws in threats and promises. "Impress me, and you could go home Sunday. Make me mad, and it could be a week."

I never can tell how much he's joking when he says that stuff.

My counts are climbing steadily now. My white blood cell count is 1.8, a big jump from 1.1 yesterday. I believe something like 3.6 would put me in the bottom of the normal range. My red blood cells counts are sitting steady, but my new bone marrow is not up to making platelets yet, so they give me platelets every couple days to keep me in a healthy range.

That's it. No great stories. I've had lots of visitors, who have been very gracious to do most of the talking while I just listen without much energy to talk.

There's a potent antibiotic that gets cut in half tomorrow. They say that antibiotic causes all the same sympmtoms the Graft-vs.-Host causes. GI problems, tiredness. We'll see if dropping that tomorrow plus the steroids they've added will take care of my iron stomach and lack of appetite.

Overall, the doctors are happy, and they still expect me to go home in the next few days. They don't think these problems are unusual, just typical for a transplant patient.