Finally home

So after several days in the hospital, lots of blood transfusions, platelet transfusions, antibiotics and medications to boost his WBC production Dad is finally back home.

During his hospital stay they were closely monitoring his labs and he was significantly anemic and his clotting factors were very low. This was to be expected from the chemo wiping out all of his bone marrow, where all of his blood cells are produced. He got several blood transfusions, platelet transfusions and close monitoring of all his labs. His blood culture did show that there was a bacteria growing, which means that there was bacteria in his blood stream (not a good thing), but it only grew from one culture and was likely a contaminant when they drew the sample. Just in case, they did treat him with several different antibiotics.

His main complaint, other than his stomach problems, was his extreme exhaustion. Dad got very poor sleep during his time in the hospital. Between trips to the bathroom, the brief moments of sleep he was able to get were not restful. For some reason Dad was talking in his sleep and acting out his dreams. Normally, during the dream cycle of sleep your body is mostly paralyzed, so you don't talk or move. Dad was talking and moving. This was so distracting to him that it would wake him up making his sleep very restless. During the days he would try to sleep while he could, but again the same problem happened. He would tell jokes, sing, gamble in vegas and talk budgets during his dreams. Sounds like him, he just didn't want it to affect him so that he would wake up. He had this problem after he had his bypass from the anesthesia they gave him, so now that he is back home we are hoping things go back to normal.

He only has one more daily visit to the clinic to have his labs checked, then he will be able to space it out a little more. The great news is that his blood cells are responding to the neupogen (the medicine to boost his infection fighters) and it seems that the stem cells are starting to do their job. His labs are staying stable and slowly getting better every day.

Dad wants to thank everyone for the constant prayers. He had some phone trouble in the hospital, so wasn't able to make or receive any calls for a short time. But for those who were trying to reach him, thank you for your kind thoughts and well wishes! Keep him in your prayers daily, each day we get closer and closer to D Day (+100 days).