APRIL 26

DAY 5

Gary has not done well today. We came in this morning for them to put him on antibiotic IV for 2 hours. This one is called Vancomycin and they will continue with this twice a day until 3 different cultures come back negative. The first one has. They administered another antibiotic through his central line called Cefepime. Because he has had a fever, he will now have this given twice a day, whether or not anything shows up in the cultures, until his white blood counts come up.

Gary has not been able to eat anything today and barely managed to drink some Gatorade, so this evening before the time I was to bring him in for the antibiotic treatment, I called to let them know how he was doing. They instructed us to come in and they planned to admit him. Gary was ready to do this, so that shows how bad he is feeling. He would do all he could to stay out of the hospital.

They will watch him tonight and if he still can't manage to keep eat anything or drink anything with nutritional content, they will put him on a nutritional IV. The doctor said that he is at the worse, and in a few days, his blood counts will start to rise and he should start feeling better.

I asked Gary tonight which was worse ... the extreme nausea or the pain. He said, that he is experiencing both. They took him off Lortab because it contains Tylenol and would mask a fever and gave him a different pain med for the "break through" pain. Obviously, it has not worked as well, so tonight the doctor said they would try something different.

Although this is all new to us, miserable for Gary and a little scary for me, it is all expected and they have seen it before. Gary is a typical transplant patient ... this time, he isn't being "special". *smile*

I appreciate your prayers! The comments we have received on Facebook and through emails, have also been such a blessing! Thank you!

APRIL 25
HEMOGLOBIN - 11.4
WHITE BLOOD COUNT - .3
PLATELETS - 66
POTASSIUM - 3.4
WEIGHT - 100.1