Day +4

Yesterday was day +4 after the transplant. The big issue from the day before was the bladder problem and urinary pain. Yesterday that subsided, but did not go away. I still have an intense urgency when it is time to go to the bathroom. Hopefully the progress continues and my bathroom experiences can return to nomal soon.


My blood counts are still dropping, although I think the latest ones might show my white blood cells have bottomed out. I get my blood drawn at least twice a day, and since staring Saturday morning my WBCs have gone from .151 to .102, to .059, to.038. With that rate of descent, I should probably bottom out without any white blood cells at some point today. The doctors came in just now and said that my neutrophils were at .003. Not many more of those cells to lose, and he expects about a week for the white blood cells to come up again. This period of time is when I am at my greatest risk of infection, and hopefully my counts start rebounding quickly.


During this same amount of time my platelets went from 55 to 22 to 10. Thats extremely low considering the desired range is from 147 to 347. So I have my first blood transfusion last night. Like the bone marrow transplant, it is a very simple tranfusion. Following the transfusion my platelets went up to just 16, and were down this morning to 13. So it looks like I'll be getting another platelet tranfusion today, as well as red blood cells.


I was supposed to go to a discharge meeting to give me information on what to expect as an oupatient transplant patient. With my bladder not working correctly, I did not want to go. My parents are there now and geting information. I also have a chest X ray scheduled for today, but I think that is just precautionary. I haven't had any problems with breating throughout this process. Ok...on to battle another day. Thank you all for your support.