Sunday +244 (Evening) Back in Rochester

Well....we are back in sunny Rochester. Actually the only snow we saw was in OK and KS on the way up. There is no snow here in Rochester; although the Zumbo River that runs through Rochester is frozen solid.

Over the last 10 days or so Jackie has been running a low-grade fever. It has ranged upwards to about 100 degrees. She has also had some nausea and stomach cramps. The most troubling problem has been very intense bone pain. The bone pain has been quite severe and required the use of some very strong pain medications.

Yesterday (Saturday the 9th) Jackie spike a fever of over 102 degrees. The official Mayo cutoff for ignoring a fever is 101.3. Jackie phoned the good folks at Mayo and they suggested she get a CBC and chest X-ray locally. We called the Radiology Department in Pryor and nobody answered the phone. In Tulsa the zoo they call the ER would have been a multi-hour wait to get a CBC and X-ray so we hopped in the car and made the 10.5 hour drive to MN. We arrived about 11:00 PM. We walked into the hospital where the nurses said, "We've been expecting you!" They had blood drawn within 20 minutes of arrival. We met with her doctor this morning and she had a chest X-ray after our meeting.

Jackie's white blood cell counts have gone from 3400 about 10 days ago with a neutrophil count of 1900 to over 25,000 with neutrophils of over 20,000 today. This doctors have no idea why this has happened. It could be the result of an infection, etc. They feel there is no reason to believe it is a reactivation of her CLL. However they plan on performing a CT scan and bone marrow biopsy to make certain that her lymph nodes and marrow are acting normally.

The rest of Jackie's counts are doing great! Her hemoglobin is 12.3 so her energy level is good. Her platelets are 217.

So, as always when in Rochester I will be updating the blog much more frequently (probably one a day or whenever the information changes).

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester