Saturday +73 (10:30 PM)

Jackie had another reasonably good day today. It started a little rocky, but finished up well. This evening we went to dinner with the manager of the apartment building, and another transplant patient. The apartment manager is from Wagoner, OK. The other transplant patient is from Tulsa, OK and also lives in our building. We went to the Rochester Golf and Country Club for dinner (which was really good) and Jackie was able to eat a more-or-less normal meal.

Today was the last (hopefully) IV Ganciclovir treatment. All told she must have received about 50-60 IV treatments. Today she graduated to the same medicine in oral form. I don't know how much the IV treatments cost, but a bottle of 30 pills retails for $1175.00; and a Starbuck's Venti Frappacino still goes for about $5.00. I still think there is more profit in the coffee.

Jackie also gets to taper her Mycophenolate dosage by another 1/4 gram tomorrow. It is still the same number of pills, but we use two different sizes to get the correct dosage.

Many of you may remember the woman that required two transplants. I saw her and her husband yesterday walking the four blocks from their apartment to their hospital. She is moving slowly, but does not require a wheelchair and is doing well. This is the lady that nobody thought would survive. For more than two weeks she was on IV nutrition and didn't engraft for over one month. Only after a second unrelated transplant did the engraftment take place. Unrelated donor transplants like Jackie's are far more difficult. For those receiving autologous (their own) stem cell transplants the process is much shorter. The lady we had dinner with tonight will receive her own cells on Monday. They are telling her she will be out of here by July 17th. She receives her transplant on Monday morning!

Tomorrow we will visit the hospital for blood work. This should only take about 30 minutes. We will do the same on Monday morning with doctor's visits to follow. If all goes well we will be packing on Monday night!

Jackie's blood counts for yesterday were available this morning. Usually we get the counts while still in the hospital. For the last two days the lab has been slow in processing the numbers. Her RBC (Hgl) for yesterday was 10.0. This was unchanged from the Thursday count. The WBC count had decreased to 1.6 from Thursday's 2.0. Her ANC was .78. Hopefully this will increase. If not, it could keep her from going home. With an ANC below .50 she will require growth factor shots and might not be considered stable enough to send home. The ANC for Thursday was slightly above 1.0. The good news is that Jackie's platelets have once again move back into the normal range at 157. They have been hovering in the near-normal range for sometime and don't seem to be a problem. Her RBC and WBC will also improve, but more slowly. It could take upwards of one year to see them return to normal levels. It is my feeling she will have good numbers for tomorrow. This is based upon my observations of her general energy level and well being.

Until Later...

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN