Day 45

Great News today: Deb is coming home! Her counts jumped dramatically from yesterday, wbc to 3.5 and ANC over 1,000. The day was kind of a roller coaster. When we first spoke this morning, Deb had a bad cough, pneumonia still an issue, but she had one of the best nights sleep she had since being in HUP. She ran a little temp. during the evening and she had some terrible coughing jags when she got out of bed and my impression was -- yukko, another same ole same ole day.

Next, I get a call around 1:00 and in the middle of a meeting and Deb says that she will be coming home on Saturday. Great news, even though we are wondering, what about the pneumonia?? The cough?? We are currently on all of these special meds?? What is going to happen when we come home?? Shouldn't we watch this for a day or two??

When I arrived, Deb had been visited by the "discharge" unit and she was scheduled to leave tomorrow! Not Saturday. Deb said "WAIT A MINUTE. HOLD ON. I AM STILL SICK!!" Needless to say, she was fuming at the thought of being "unplugged from the IV's" and rolled into the Avalon for the trip home. She wanted a day or two of observation, with everything unhooked to see how she is really doing on her own.

Deb wore herself out fretting over the potential discharge decision and she took a short nap until Dr. Porter arrived. When he did, she asked all the right questions and Dr. Porter said, "your counts are fine -- almost normal. You are fighting the pneumonia on your own and your wbc will probably handle it. We aren't treating the virus, that has to run its course. You can be sitting in the hospital with a fever or at home with a fever -- we aren't doing anything about that fever. But I still want to make sure that this fever is not related to the leukemia. When I am confident that it is not, you can go home."

We think this double speak means Friday at the earliest and Saturday at the latest. But the big suitcase is in the trunk of the car in case it means tomorrow.

Dr. Porter wants to see Deb in 2 weeks for a bone marrow biopsy and a CAT scan of her lungs. The bone marrow will tell us where we are with the leukemia.

Deb is still very weak and we are both wondering if she has the strength to get up the stairs to her bedroom. Once she gets back into the house and we understand what she can do, we will let you know. I suspect that she is weaker than we think since she has been in an essentially "bed ridden" enviornment for the past 6 weeks. Hopefully, we will be able to whip up her favorite dishes and build her back up quickly. We are hoping for good times now!

Deb sends her love to all.