Day 62
I had my clinic visit on Wednesday this week because my doctor is out of town later in the week. There were several interesting findings on this visit. First, my kidneys (not my liver like I indicated before) continue to show signs of distress I believe through elevated levels of creatine in my blood. This is enough of a concern to the doctor that while I was there, they infused 2 liters of fluid (4 hours worth).
We noticed a slight rash on my torso and they seem to think it is indicative of graft vs. host disease (GvHD). In addition, my blood counts were down a bit:
WBC – 2.8 (down from 5.2)
Hgb – 11.2 (down from 11.4)
Plt – 187 (down from 233)
The WBC could drop because of GvHD and the hemoglobin is down only slightly (and they gave me another shot of Procrit), but I don’t remember an explanation of why the platelet count might be down. All of this together led them to set up another appointment for tomorrow (Friday) for more blood tests, including a chimerism study of the circulating blood (which would show percentage of blood from new bone marrow versus old bone marrow). Depending on the results of some of these tests, they may decide to do another bone marrow biopsy tomorrow also.
I guess these changes might not be unusual or unexpected, but the more I think about it (and as I write about it), the more I wonder if they might be indicative of a problem. I guess we’ll know more soon, and in the meantime, I’m going to try not to worry about it, because the worrying doesn’t actually do any good. The other thing is that I still feel pretty good overall, and for that I am grateful.
I walked a little over a mile today because my feet feel a bit better and I feel like I need the exercise. So far, my feet are still not complaining about it.
I will write again as soon as I know anything more. Again, prayers and other good thoughts are appreciated and do help.
Love,
Justin
We noticed a slight rash on my torso and they seem to think it is indicative of graft vs. host disease (GvHD). In addition, my blood counts were down a bit:
WBC – 2.8 (down from 5.2)
Hgb – 11.2 (down from 11.4)
Plt – 187 (down from 233)
The WBC could drop because of GvHD and the hemoglobin is down only slightly (and they gave me another shot of Procrit), but I don’t remember an explanation of why the platelet count might be down. All of this together led them to set up another appointment for tomorrow (Friday) for more blood tests, including a chimerism study of the circulating blood (which would show percentage of blood from new bone marrow versus old bone marrow). Depending on the results of some of these tests, they may decide to do another bone marrow biopsy tomorrow also.
I guess these changes might not be unusual or unexpected, but the more I think about it (and as I write about it), the more I wonder if they might be indicative of a problem. I guess we’ll know more soon, and in the meantime, I’m going to try not to worry about it, because the worrying doesn’t actually do any good. The other thing is that I still feel pretty good overall, and for that I am grateful.
I walked a little over a mile today because my feet feel a bit better and I feel like I need the exercise. So far, my feet are still not complaining about it.
I will write again as soon as I know anything more. Again, prayers and other good thoughts are appreciated and do help.
Love,
Justin
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