Steve slept better last night than he had in weeks, according to his opinion. I heard him snoring gently all night. We had an exceptionally wonderful nurse, Denise, and she kept him comfortable. His 3 a.m. labs showed marked improvement. A lot of my fear from yesterday's procedure was based on his bad labs and risk of bleeding. Today's WBCs shot up to 1.5 from a dismal (and neutropenic, gads!!) 0.7 yesterday. ANCs are right behind at 1.2, double from yesterday's 0.6. He ended up taking 5 bags of platelets in an 18 hour period, so today's count of 14 is misleading. Hopefully, knocking that spleen out of the ballpark will show a true number soon.
The interventional radiologist from Feinberg visited Steve this morning at 6:30. He resembles a young Andy Garcia, so that was a pleasant way to start my Thursday :) He checked out Steve's groin/femoral plug, and said all was well. The spleen had started enlarging (again); doc said it was pretty big. Of course that triggered our version of a classic fishing tale...."Ya shoulda seen how big it USED to be! Heck, in April that darned thing had it's own zip code!" O.K, I exaggerate a bit there, you get the idea. On April 30, diagnosis day, his spleen distended about 2" below his belly button. Here's a normal spleen:
The radiologist said they went for the maximum embolization. It will take months for the organ to completely infarct and wither up. Not sure if wither up is medically accurate. Maybe it's more like the transition of grape to raisin? Speaking of wine, I snuck some into the hospital last night from Water Tower Place. Hot shower, cold wine, snoring husband, million dollar view, full moon....ahhhh. ZZZZ.
Waiting on rounds, going to fetch a Starbucks on 2.
Boy that's encouraging news, I hope nailing that spleen is the ticket to his numbers cooperating and he'll be more steadily on the mend. Yikes, I can't even imagine a spleen being that large! Hang in there, keeping all appendages crossed!
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