D + 32 - Hoping for better days ahead

The past three days have not been “good” ones for Courtney. In fact, they’ve been downright crummy. I wouldn’t say she’s taken a step back in terms of her progress, but her overall energy level and physical comfort have definitely been on the down side.

Last Thursday’s biopsy went pretty well. The drugs (Versed) still didn’t knock out Courtney as much as she would have liked, but they gave her as much as they could. Apparently she’s really tolerant to the narcotic medications. The nurse who administered the drug said the amount he gave her typically knocks out large men.

Since the middle of last weeks she’s also been feeling some pain under her rib cage that makes it a little hard for her to take deep breaths. They took a chest x-ray just to be safe, and that came back clear. They’re not sure what’s causing the pain, but think it might be due to tension and stress. They advised her to take some pain meds to control it and to call if it got worse.

The main purpose of the biopsy was to check for cancer. Those results should be back within a couple of days. The genetic tests to determine whose cells are multiplying in her bone marrow, hers or Tracy’s, will take up to a week. Again, the goal is to have it all be Tracy’s cells, to mitigate the risk of Leukemic cells returning.

Since Thursday, the pain under her ribs hasn’t improved at all, and her nausea has kept her in bed for the better part of each day. We just realized that it’s been a couple of days since she stopped using a sopolamine patch (the kind you put behind your ear to keep from hurling when you go deep sea fishing). She had been using it since before she left the hospital. Chances are, it was still helping to keep the nausea at bay, so she reapplied one this evening. Hopefully that will help, and tomorrow will be a better day.

We still really believe that most of her discomfort and ill feelings are stemming from the Foscarnet. The last dose of that will be this coming Thursday. And we’re still hoping that that will mark a day when we will really start to see her feeling better both physically and emotionally. The physical discomforts, especially the nausea, really drain her energy and take a toll on her emotionally. Fortunately, her ailments have been discomforts and nothing more. Meaning that she hasn’t had any infections to deal with nor have we seen any outward signs of graft versus host disease (GVHD). Also, her blood counts, especially her WBC’s and neutrophils continue to look really good.

So, we’re happy to see her progress towards that 100th day since the transplant, And while we know that we will likely see her go up and down with regards to how she feels, we wish and pray that she puts these bad days become less frequent and less miserable and soon become a thing of the past.