Day 23: Back in the Bighouse

Good morning everyone!

It's warm and sunny in the Twin Cities and Braxton and I have a nice view of the river from our window at the U. of M hospital. We had a pretty good sleeping night. The hospital floor is not full, right now, so Braxton does not have a roomate. Dr Lund came in to talk more about Braxton's situation right now, and it looks like we'll be here for at least 3 days. Braxton's WBC (white blood cell) and ANC (absolute neutralfil count) are at 0 (0.5 and 0.1) ,essentially, and they need to be at 1000 to leave the hospital. The low counts are due to his massive chemo treatment last weekend, and that he just had his Neulasta injection on wednesday. Neulasta is the drug that Braxton gets every 3 weeks (after chemo) to raise his WBC and ANC counts high enough so as not to get a fever. The fever and mouthsores are indications of very low counts. The fever is gone but the mouth sores are bad enough that Braxton does not want to eat because they hurt. He has sores around his tongue, inside his lips and a couple on the outside of his mouth. There isn't a med that can get rid of the sores. As Braxton's counts rise, the sores will heal on their own. We've been told that this all happens fairly quickly (within 5 days).

For today, Braxton and I are hangin out. We can't go outside because the breeze brings germs, but we can wander the hospital again and get some excercise. Braxton has been told that he needs to move to maintain muscle mass and to keep blood from pooling up in his legs where there is still some sweling from surgery. We may go visit the Maternity floor and look in the baby window. This hospital isn't very big and we've covered most of it, in our wanderings already. :)

I heard a great song, lastnight, on my way to the hospital. The chorus says "I can see the fingerprints of God when I look at you..." That's Braxton. I see God's hand on him and we're listening to hear what else we may learn from this time.
Braxton enjoys reading comments from you all!


-posted by Beth