D + 20 - A New Year, but not quite home yet

Unfortunately our year isn't quite starting off how we had hoped. Courtney is still in the hospital battling low-grade fevers and pretty bad nausea that hits her about twice a day. However, we still are looking forward to having a great 2008.

During the early morning hours of Monday, just hours from being discharged, Courtney developed a fever of 100.7. A fever over 100.5 dictates that they draw blood to culture for infection, perform chest x-rays and start her on a couple of IV antibiotics. Then they like to keep her for another 48 hours to monitor and wait for the blood cultures to come back negative so they can discontinue the antibiotics. So, here we are, hoping that tomorrow Courtney will actually get to go home.

The CMV results also came back positive, albeit with only a few cells showing up. So, while it’s good that the counts dropped considerably, they don’t cut back on the Foscarnet until they see zero CMV. This is unfortunate since it seems likely that the Foscarnet is one of the drugs contributing to the nausea.

So, apart from the CMV, and the nausea, and the fevers, and the fact that she’s still in the hospital, the transplant has been a great success with the stem cells engrafting “wonderfully.” All of her blood counts continue to look really good, and she hasn’t had to receive any transfusions in almost a week. With her WBC’s within normal, her risk of infection is greatly reduced. However, they’re giving her drugs including Prograff that essentially turn off her immune system to prevent graft versus host disease. This makes her very susceptible to viruses.

One more day. One more night. And then Courtney’s home, back in her own bed. While this seems likely to be the case, I’m not making any promises.