Sunday, Nov 22, 2015 (Day 17 from CART cell infusion)

It was an exciting 2am lab report this morning when I saw that BJ’s white blood cell count was down to 22.6k!! BJ is still in the middle of a violent struggle between two strong forces, and he isn’t aware of his numbers yet. I told him, but the words didn’t get through the fog. He was taken off the continuous morphine dose, which seemed to not control his pain as well as it had. He is on a continuous dose of Dilaudid now, and we just need to watch him for a while to see how it will work. His afternoon labs came in, and his WBC was 24.5k. Small variances in counts like this are not a concern, so it’s still heading in the right direction. His temperature this evening rose to 106.2 degrees, and it was very apparent that he was struggling. It’s becoming more difficult to rouse him to swallow pills, so sometimes they aren’t taken at the most appropriate time. The doc that saw him again today was still pleased in what he saw. Hopefully BJ will have a more restful night. He needs a big block of uninterrupted sleep, and that just isn’t happening for a variety of reasons.