We just want to go home

On August 14, 2015 by Michelle Love

There are a couple of very frustrated people in this room! We want to go home! BJ isn’t getting discharged today, even though he hasn’t had a fever in over 48 hours. He’s still getting the IV antibiotic, and per protocol, he will continue to get it until he’s able to be discharged. They have to see some recovery in his blood counts to let him go home. That didn’t happen today. His white blood cell count is 100. A normal white blood cell count is between 4500 – 10,000. He still has no ANC (measure of immune system). His platelet count had actually decreased from 11k yesterday to 8k this morning, so he has already received a unit of platelets. They’re expecting that with him being on day 23 of this cycle, his counts should be on the upswing.

The frustration is that the high dose Ara-C he received a few weeks ago is supposed to bottom out his blood counts. So it’s just a waiting game, fever or not, for those to recover. Because he had a fever, he has to stay here until that happens. The bright side of this is that he didn’t get a fever two weeks ago, because he would be here from that point until count recovery! Thankful that this fever happened toward the latter part of this cycle!!

Maybe tomorrow….