Good Day!

Steve's CT scan was uneventful.  We had never been in the outpatient facility at 676 N. St. Clair before today. 

It was remodeled in the past year, and that made it nice for both of us.   The patient waiting area had flat-screens and the main waiting room had complimentary Keurig coffee and tea and a great wireless signal.  (Simple things for simple people, I know....)

After the CT, we had our weekly appointment with Dr. Altman and our Stem Cell APN, Donna.  They are VERY pleased with his progress since last week.  Steve looks better, feels better, his labs are more stable, and he is walking unassisted and with better balance.  He is no longer taking potassium, yet his magnesium bounces up and down.  He is taking a lot fewer pills than 3 weeks ago at discharge.  He GAINED weight since last week, too, up to a fluffy 154 pounds from 148.  The scan showed evidence of much infarcting of the spleen, which is great.  The radiologist and Dr. Altman were going to confer later and determine whether or not a third embolization would be in the cards.  She feels that we are going to go into a holding pattern, and will allow his hemoglobin level to go down to 7.0 again before transfusing.  We don't know what "normal" hemoglobin ever was for Steve, and will not know until the organ is removed some day in the future.  As much worrying and complaining as we have done about his spleen, it may have saved his life.  It WAS doing it's job, and that's why it was so enlarged in April.  If he had had it removed years ago, he may have been a goner by the time the leukemia was diagnosed.  Just some food for thought there.  

Home health will be reduced to every other day, which is nice.  He will undergo an ENT and eye exam on Friday, as they will start giving him Exjade, an iron chelator.   Extremely high levels of iron (from many blood transfusions) can cause heart or liver damage.  They will monitor his vision and hearing before and during the Exjade treatment.  I have no idea how long he will be on the drug, and I'm a bit iffy with what I've read about it today.   ::Sigh::

Next week he will have another bone marrow biopsy.  We have requested Dr. Tim or Dr. John Galvin, our old hematology fellow friends.  The last biopsy was the bad one, and Dr. Altman is trying to accommodate us with our preferred practitioners.  This next biopsy will determine how much cellular activity is happening in Steve's marrow.  If it's not much, they will reinfuse him with more of Mary's cells.  (Not all 7.5 million, I asked...probably half.)  If activity is sufficient, we will play the waiting game and probably give him some Neupogen to stimulate white cell production.  

Did someone say, "Let's play Find The Neupogen in the Fridge Game?"  Okay kiddies, here is a recent shot of our refrigerator.  Let's play!  Top shelf?  Nope.  That's a magnesium and potassium rider to the right of the can of dog food leftovers.  Two of those bags fell out and landed on Kevin recently, scaring the heck out of the poor guy.  Second shelf...you are getting warm....left to right...."borrowed" juice cups from the hospital, a bottle of Tacrolimus (anti-rejection drug), fruit punch and garlic, of course...oh wait, the dark bag with the green sticker?  Sorry, that's the Pentamindine (anti-pneumonia) inhalant solution.  Think those two boxes with barcoding are chocolates for this lady of leisure?  If you said, NO, SUE, those are really sharp things in those boxes! you WIN!  Wait, you'll have to pay Uncle Sam tax on $10,000 of prize value.  That's the cost to our insurance company.  It's also what Mary took to stimulate production of stem cells in her peripheral blood.  Mary had 2 courses, Steve has one for home.  That's a lotta moolah.

A sign of huge improvement on the way home, and I'll leave you with this:  We drove through Portillo's on the way home from the hospital and he INHALED a baconburger, Coke, and large fries.   Goodnight!