Wednesday +21 (10:30 PM)

Once again we finished up the late night antibiotic treatment about 10:00 tonight. Jackie felt a little better during the evening hours. She still did not have the energy to walk any of the distance to the hospital appointments.

Her eyes have improved a great deal. I'm not sure why, maybe it was the $40 tiny bottle of eye drops? Her rash was also much better today. Even her back pain had eased.

I did some research on the various drugs she is taking. I think her shaky tremulous is related to the anti rejection drugs. Both cyclosporine and mycophenolate can cause this. Side effects also could be causing her altered mental state. She is hazy some of the time. The good news is that these side effects all go away as dosages are reduced. Blood levels are checked twice per week for cyclosporine and once per week for mycophenolate.

I spoke with the man who's wife underwent her second transplant a couple of days ago this evening. He told me she is really having a rough time. She hasn't eaten anything in 14 days and is receiving IV nutrition. I'm fairly certain she has been inpatient for about 35 days. They certainly hope the second transplant will do better than the first. They think during her first transplant they failed to get enough donor cells infused. She was also in very poor physical condition going into the transplant. They were unable to get her into a good remission status. She also has a far more serious set of conditions than Jackie. It seems this is often the case for people here. Jackie's disease (CLL) while serious, is far less serious than many of the diseases we see here in the stem cell transplant patients.

I guess the point is that no matter how bad you think you are...there are people in worse condition!

Well off to bed early. We have a 7:00 AM CT scan appointment. That means getting up at about 5:45.

Until later,

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN