Friday +79 (10:15 PM)

As we have seen before there are good days and bad days. This was one of those bad days. Due to the new growth factor shots Jackie spent much of the day in bed and asleep. The new medicine gave her a terrible headache, more nausea, a low-grade fever, and flu-like symptoms. These are all side effects of the new brand of growth factor they are using.

Fortunately she improved as the day went along. It was a two pain pill day, but by early evening she had recovered nicely and finished up the day feeling almost normal. Hopefully her body will begin to tolerate the new drug and the symptoms will lessen. She is taking Tylenol to try and stay on top of the headache. It was really intense this morning.

The good news is that her CMV test from yesterday is again negative! As long as it continues to be negative things will improve. Her counts were probably degraded by the extensive Ganciclovir treatments. She is still taking oral Ganciclovir, but at a much lower dose.

I did a pill count this evening to determine how many pills she is taking on a daily basis. Her nightly pill count was only 3 and this prompted me to do a total count for the day. She is down to 23 pills per day! Now that may sound like a lot, but it is down from the nearly 50 at one point. The count would actually be much lower than 23 but she takes 8 magnesium pills per day. For whatever reason she is still not producing much magnesium. This can be partly attributed to her diet. It is almost all liquid (still). If she were eating normally she wouldn't be having much of a problem.

We have another growth factor shot in the morning at 9:00 AM. That's the excitement for the day! With luck, she will feel better with no headache. If she feels OK we may take a drive and look at the mile upon mile upon mile upon mile of cornfields. Maybe someday she will feel really well and we can take a drive over to Austin, MN and visit the Spam museum!

Until Later...

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN