Post Transplant Day 5

I’ll get right to the point. The stool sample sent to the lab yesterday was a precautionary step always taken for stem cell  transplant patients to ensure that the diarrhea was caused by the chemo and not an infection. Most of the time it comes back negative for infection and then the diarrhea is treated. Late afternoon Karl’s sample came back inconclusive so more tests were run. Then it came back positive for a bacterial infection. This is terrible news. His neutrophils were measured at 0.5 at 6 am this morning, but are still dropping and may be at or near zero now, so he has no immune system to fight this infection. He was started on the antibiotic flagyl, but prayers and positive thoughts are needed as well.

If there is any positive here it is that his temperature has not gone up at all, so he is not showing any sign of infection other than what was found at the lab. He was tired all day and mostly napped. He was nauseous but did not get sick, and still has diarrhea. He is still taking Gravol paired with another anti-nausea med that I can’t remember. He was also restarted on a low dose of dexamethasone to help with the nausea. Neupogen was added to the list again today as a booster for the transplanted stem cells to help them start to grow and rebuild the immune system. We need them to develop and grow now more than ever.

Comments

  1. Karl6 December 2017 at 04:51

    Sh_t happens.....it seems to be all the time. When battling cancer, There’s a new challenge around every corner. I don’t even consider this a setback, I’ve probably had it for months. It doesn’t seem like it will have much of an effect on my treatments or even slow them down at this point. With any luck, it might even create a demand to stimulate neutrophil growth.

    Right now, those new stem cells are swimming around in my blood, inserting themselves into my bone marrow finding their homes, and starting to produce new blood cells to keep me healthy. The race is on, get in there and get it done.


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