And so it continues

Gail, Garry’s sister has come from Victoria, BC to visit him while he is in the hospital. We haven’t seen Gail in person for the last two years and it was a very emotional moment when she first saw Garry this morning.

We saw the internal medicine resident while we were there and of course I had a number of questions for him. The biggest concern at this time is the lack of white blood cells. Garry’s count is at a critical level of 0.2. We still don’t have the results of the bone marrow biopsies, one which was taken last Wednesday and then another last Friday. Hopefully the results will show why Garry’s bone marrow is not producing cells.

In spite of a blood transfusion, and four days of grastofil injections whitch are meant to kickstart his bone marrow into producing cells, there has been no improvement in his counts. His haemoglobin today was 79 and Dr. Gotham said if it dropped any lower they would give him another blood transfusion.

Garry has also been experiencing some chest pain and they are doing an echocardiogram this afternoon to see if there are any concerning changes to his heart.
His troponin level is still elevated at 244 which may indicate some damage to his heart.
Garry is on an overnight nitro patch to deal with the chest pain.
They think due to his low hemoglobin, his heart has had to work harder to get adequate oxygen. He also is experiencing some edema which they will treat with Lasix along with monitoring his weight daily. The edema also causes his heart to work harder because of the extra fluid in his body.

Pain in the Perianal area continues to be an issue. The minute Garry gets up to walk or do anything the pain shoots up to a seven or eight out of 10. They have added short acting sublingual fentanyl to deal with that.

They are hoping to discontinue the IV vancomycin and meropenem and put him on oral antibiotics which would continue upon his discharge.
There are still no plans to send him home at this point.
Hopefully, when they get the bone marrow biopsy results, they will have a better idea of how to manage the neutropenia.

Garry continues to be upbeat and optimistic through it all and is so thankful for all the amazing care he has received.

Thanks once again for your continued support, encouragement, and prayers.