Post for Friday June 23

The Journey Blog is under new management. Shirley will be taking over content creation and Garry will be providing technical support.

Garry has a significant number of new things going on with him.

He has been somewhat confused and angry, which is very unlike him. Yesterday the doctor told him he had delirium that can be caused by an infection, the pain he is in or the pain meds. He also has abnormal blood clotting factors, so they have him on anticoagulant therapy to deal with that.

I‘ve gone with him the last two days to HSC CancerCare  by a stretcher transport for his last few radiation treatments, with the last dose #20 being this afternoon.

His white cell count is still very critical and he has no white cells in the differentials and an extremely low count of 0.3. I didn’t know that such a result was even possible!
His haemoglobin had dropped from 122 to 70 and they are now doing testing to see if his red cells are auto hemolyzing. As best they can tell, it appears his bone marrow has stopped producing cells. They are doing another bone marrow biopsy this morning as they feel they didn’t get an adequate sample the other day.

So far his blood cultures and urine cultures are negative but they are repeating them just to be sure.

They have now given him some heavy duty IV medications, Vancomycin, and Meropenem in addition to the previously given Piperacillin and Tazobactam, as he was still running a fever yesterday. Last night his temperature spiked but was normal this morning.

The doctors are doing a lot of testing as he has a significant number of other concerning results in his blood chemistry. It appears that he will be in isolation, in the hospital for some time. The internal medicine resident yesterday said that they  had more questions than answers at the moment.

The dietitian has also been involved with providing Garry a nutrient dense, high fibre diet, along with many snacks throughout the day to encourage him to eat more. Due to all the medications and pain that Garry has been in, he has not been eating properly and has lost weight, which he certainly cannot afford to lose.

So, our journey continues, but we are receiving such wonderful medical care with so many people helping us along the way.

Thanks to everyone for your care and concern.