Welcome to Day +11! Jeffrey received his Bone Marrow Transplant 11 days ago and it’s been 14 days since his last dose of Chemotherapy. Jeffrey’s old stem cells are gone, and it appears that the donor provided stem cells are getting settled in and are starting to produce new blood, platelets and white blood cells. One of the key milestones in Jeffrey’s recovery is for him to have more than 500 Absolute Neutrophil Count(ANC) for three days in a row which is known as engraftment. Jeffrey’s ANC counts for the last three days were 15,18 and 130.
Chemotherapy-induced Mucositis began to affect Jeffrey on Saturday, June 23, 2018. He started to have trouble swallowing at breakfast and it got worse throughout the day. By Sunday morning Jeffrey could no longer swallow, and the pain was becoming very uncomfortable. All his oral medicines were converted to Intravenous medicines (IV). They also added a Patient-Controlled Analgesia (PCA) pump to his IV stand. Jeffrey was receiving a continuous amount of morphine and could push the button to get a small bump. Because of the number of medicines, a third IV brain was also added to the IV stand. In addition, Jeffrey’s hair has started to fall out in big giant clumps. We have been changing his pillowcase frequently to remove the hair.
Sunday, June 24, 2017 was a very difficult day for Jeffrey. He pushed the PCA button about 20 times between Sunday and Monday. The continuous feed of morphine and the amount the button push delivered were both increased on Monday. Jeffrey is not very comfortable even with the higher doses of morphine. Hopefully Jeffrey’s ANC will continue to increase. Once he has enough ANCs, his new immune system can then stop the advancement of the Chemotherapy-induced Mucositis and start healing the sores in his throat.
Jeffrey received a transfusion of platelets on Monday to bring his counts above his personal minimums. This is fantastic news since he went four days between platelet infusions. Platelets are the slowest to recover from the Bone Marrow Transplant. One of the main criteria for Jeffrey to go home is for him to hold on to his platelets for at least three days.
Keep Jeffrey in your prayers and keep those good thoughts coming his way.
