Day 5 Consolidation - Blood Patch

After four days of a nearly debilitating headache, Courtney received what is called a blood patch. A neuroradiologist injected some of Courtney’s blood into the epidural space where they gave her a spinal tap. The makes sort of a patch to stave the leaking spinal fluid which was the likely cause of her severe headache. While this probably won’t completely make the pain go away, it should help significantly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for Courtney. Especially since they had to basically do it twice since the first time they determined they had approached from a bad angle. Everything was done with fluoroscopy so they could tell exactly where to put they patch. So, while she has a sore back and her head aches slightly, she feels better now than she has since Monday.

Today is also the last day of Courtney’s chemo during this consolidation therapy. She won’t need another dose of chemo until her bone marrow transplant, which should be in about four to five weeks.

Courtney will probably be coming home tomorrow. Over the next few days her WBC’s will be dropping just like they did during her last chemotherapy treatment. This means that we’ll have to take precautions, similar to the ones we had to take when she was in the hospital. It could likely be a very difficult two weeks ahead of us. We’re hoping and praying that things don’t go south for Courtney as bad as they did last time. Unfortunately there’s no way to know for sure how things are going to go. So, in the mean time our goal is to keep Courtney in a clean and comfortable environment. We’ll have to limit visitors, but feel free to call to see if Courtney is up for a chat!