Day +7

Last night was a bad night for both of us. Neither of us could sleep and my mom fought nausea and a stomach ache all night. She woke up feeling the same. Just altogether horrible. I can't believe how bad she looks and feels. And the doctor keeps saying this is completely normal. Her wbc is still .0. her platelets and red blood cells dropped so they are going to start a platelet transfusion in a bit. She is now receiving 200 mg of Flucanazole, an antifungal, followed by the typical regimen of antibiotics, antivirals, and antinausea meds as needed. She is still hooked up to the saline solution for dehydration since she can't eat or drink anything (besides a few sips of coke, which is bizarre- she hasn't had coke since before I was born). They are also giving her another shot of Nupegeon to stimulate her new stem cells to produce wbc first. It's so fascinating that science has come this far.

Before I go to bed every night, I repeat my mantra: "engraft, engraft, engraft." The doctor thinks she is right on track. They said she will begin to see some white blood cells in a couple days. Once we see a few, we should expect exponential growth. They are still estimating our release day either Sunday or Monday. One week left. Seems like forever to us both. I just can't imagine her feeling this way for another 5 days! It takes everything she has to just sit up in bed. She keeps her hand over her eyes to shade the light from the window (which we keep open all the time to remind us of a world to get back to). She has hardly spoken today, even to the doctor and nurses. I am trying to be so positive about it all, but I honestly hate seeing her this way. It just makes me so sad and scared. I know she will get better, I really do. I just don't want to leave her side until I know that the white blood cells are back and fighting for her. It's almost that I have to fight for her until her body will.

In the meantime, I have finished four novels and about 10 magazines, caught up on video poker strategies, perused facebook to exhaustion, read car reviews, worked on the nonprofit, paced the hallway for exercise, written this blog, made a nutrition plan for my mom, finished several crossword puzzles, relearned about electricity on wikipedia, and tried to sleep (which is mostly just lying awake thinking). i'd say I keep pretty busy. In between my endeavors, I check my mom's breathing. I do this all night, even though the nurse checks her vitals every couple hours.

I pray, that if she can't have a better day today, then she sleeps through it. So far, so good.