In the Waiting Place

On November 11, 2015 by Michelle Love

BJ was discharged from Duke Medical Center this afternoon. He received a unit of platelets during the night. His white blood cell count is now at 2000, and today, 82% of those are blasts. Again, Dr. Martin reassured BJ and I that at the moment, we don’t need to worry about the ‘82%’. That’s hard not to do, but BJ felt much better about it after being able to discuss it with Dr. Martin. If his white blood cell count were to spike, like it did in September, we would need to intervene with more chemotherapy. Right now, we just have to wait.

BJ is very tired today. He has trouble sleeping on a normal basis, but it’s even harder to sleep when he’s inpatient at Duke. Last night was worse than the past couple nights. Because he was getting platelets, his vitals were being checked every 15 minutes. His heart rate drops below 45 bpm consistently when he is sleeping. It’s always been that way. The night nurse had his monitor set to alarm at 45, so when it dropped below, it alarmed. And it alarmed often, waking him up. I asked the nurse to silence it in the room, but he said that wasn’t possible to do, and still hear it at the desk. Our night nurse for the weekend had it silent in the room, and BJ got a little more sleep that way.

He has to go back to the hem/onc clinic at Duke tomorrow to recheck his blood counts. Hoping for a good night’s sleep tonight!

Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragements…