Wednesday +268 (Evening)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, a happy holidays, and a good New Year.

Jackie has improved some over the last week. She is still dealing with a lot of nausea and some bone pain. It has certainly lessened during the last week but it is far from resolved. In spite of fairly good blood counts her energy level continues to be very low.

Jackie had a CBC yesterday and the results were fairly good. Her RBC (Hgl) level had improved to 11.0. Her WBC count continues to do well at 5.2. Her neutrophils are a bit low at 1.0 (1000). In the past these were much higher. They have also been much lower. At the .5 (500) level she will receive a growth factor shot. The usually produce a significant amount of bone pain and are she does not look forward to them. Her platelets have dropped a bit to 163. This is still within normal ranges but down from a record high in the 200s a couple of weeks ago. Jackie's lymphocytes continue to be high at 3.7 (70.5%). Normal is 19-48.

She continues to run a low-grade fever. It ranges from 99-100.5 degrees. Her normal baseline temperature is about 97.6. Of course the reason for the fever is unknown. It would seem there is still some distress or infection that is leading to the elevated temperature. We can only hope that the problem will eventually fix itself.

Jackie continues with the Vancomycin taper. I think part of her nausea is as a result of this drug. She should also begin to taper her Cyclosporine within the next couple of weeks. Her Prednisone is already at a very low level and will probably be tapered to zero soon.

So...the good news is that she is improved from a week ago. She still has a long way to go but with luck each day will slowly get better.

Until Later....

Bruce and Jackie
From Pryor