Days 15 and 16 Consolidation - BMT tests

Another long day. Today's cancer related activities started at 8:30 and ended at 5:00 . It didn’t start out too well, as Courtney battled a head ache and nausea when she woke up. We arrived at the clinic where they drew her blood and gave her some medication to help with her discomforts. Then we went upstairs from the BMT clinic for Courtney’s chest x-ray. That didn’t take long, but by the time we were done it was 12:30 . Then Court rested until 1:30 at which time we went down the road to St. Paul for her MUGA (Multiple Gated Acquisition Scan) to assess Courtney's heart. That took a couple of hours. We then went back to the BMT clinic because she still needed to receive platelets. We finally headed home at 5:00 . Everything seemed to move in slow motion today. It doesn’t seem like a lot happened to justify so many hours. Fortunately it was mostly a lot of sitting and lying around. Not too exerting.

The good news is she got new medication to help keep the nausea away – phenergan. That’s always worked best for her. Plus, it’s likely that the zofran she had been taking for nausea was the source of her headache.

The better news is that her chest x-rays and MUGA were fine. She got the thumbs up from both of those. The technician who performed Courtney’s MUGA was bald. He got a kick out of the t-shirt she wore that Susan had sent – “Does this shirt make my head look bald?”

The best news is that her neutrophils are at 500!! That’s almost a week sooner than we were expecting. Tomorrow they are probably going to give her blood as well as Procrit. Procrit is like Neupogen, except to boost her RBC’s instead of WBC’s.

Today's CBC:

WBC = .8
RBC = 2.72
HGB = 8.5
HCT = 23 (Cut off is 22 for blood, so she will probably get some tomorrow.)
Neutrophils = .5 (Goal is 1)

Tomorrow may be another long day. She has her PFT (pulmonary function test) along with the possible blood. Then Thursday is her bone marrow biopsy. They’ve promised to give her versed, if that’s what she wants. And it is. A mostly unconscious Courtney during the biopsy is a mostly happy Courtney after the biopsy.