Two for the price of one!

First blog of the day...Woody's dream and now...some more information about his day. I had a fairly long blog all ready and it disappeared. So...will try to reproduce at least part of it! The pictures of Woody in bed are of him writing his "dream blog." This lets you see his bedside...view out the window (Children's Inn)...the bandage over his Hickman Catheter peeking out of his gown neck. We will be going to a class tomorrow on the care of the catheter...hope that I make it through the instruction! Once again I am being forced into a nursing situation!!!!!!!!! I'm still NOT a NURSE!!!! I don't know if I ever mentioned...but this catheter was tunnelled into his jugular vein. Oh, my! He has to keep it in till our return visit the first of September. He has to have apheresis at that time and using this catheter makes it much easier...for him and them! The picture of him with the mask on is of him ready for his first excursion out of his room since he became neutropenic. He has to wear a mask when he leaves the room.

I will share some of his counts for those interested. WBC .90 [4.23-9.07 K/uL]; RBC 2.96 [4.63-6.08 M/uL]; Platelet Count 27 [161-347 K/uL]; Neutrophil Absolute (ANC) 0.00 [1.78-5.38 K/uL]. I know that my nurse friends will be interested and for the rest at least you can see that he is low! The numbers in the brackets are the range in which these should fall.

Woody pretty much gave a summary of his "sinking" time last night. He definitely is much better today. Hopefully he is now on the rebound. We were very glad to hear that his creatinine level is going down. He is still losing water weight. He lost another two pounds from yesterday's weigh-in. So he has lost a total of 10 1/2 pounds since Sunday. He still got lasix one time today which gave him a lot of exercise getting up to go to the bathroom about every 10 minutes. Getting up and down exhausts him. He still has next to no appetite...so he's not eating very well.

And, now...Goosey and I wish Esther-Noel a very happy birthday! She is now a BIG girl of 3!