Engraftment?

Today was another day like yesterday. Lots of discomfort. They gave him a morphine pump, which we can control. I try not to give it to too often. I don't want to rely on that all the time to help him feel better. However, tonight, he has been trying to fall asleep since 7:30, and it is now 11:00. I gave him 4 pumps of the morphine, but he still is very restless. There is a plus side to the fact that he seems to be aching all over. It seems that he might be engrafting.

There are a few signs of engraftment, including body aches, fever, and of course his blood make up. His white blood cell count is up to 0.10 and his white blood cell make up has started to change. As engraftment happens, the monocyte cells will start to appear. His cells are now 25% monocytes, which is a good sign. The ANC (Absolute Nuetrophil Count) is still at 0. They expect that number to be above 0.5 before he is able to leave the hospital.

He has the body aches, which are really pains in his bones from the cells. He has had a fever on and off the past couple days. Not too high. The highest it got was 100.8 today, and it quickly dropped to 99.6 degrees about 10 minutes later. So it seems that he is starting to engraft. We will see how quickly the process goes, but one of the doctors seems to think we could possibly be out of the hospital in 2 weeks or so. I am going to assume that is wishful thinking, and expect it to be longer, but be very happy if it is really 2 weeks.

Adam is back from his weekend in Austin. Cael seemed to miss him. As Adam walked passed me holding Cael, Cael reached up for Adam to pick him up. Now they are sitting on his bed waiting for Cael to fall asleep. He is being such a bedtime warrior tonight. He just doesn't want to sleep! On the plus side, this will probably help him sleep all the way through the breathing treatment in the morning.