Mom is really having a rough go of it these last couple of days. She moved rooms today - to Medical ICU, and so her room phone # changed to 215-662-4919. She was moved because in addition to pneumonia, it appears she has fluid on her lungs, as well as an atrial fibrillation in her heart, and they are able to more closely monitor those things there in ICU. He mouth is bleeding a lot, requiring the nurses to suction it out frequently. Swallowing the blood has made her just about lose her voice, and she finds it difficult to speak when she has it. She is very weak, in and out coherently, and finds it hard to sleep much. Her blood counts are lower than I have ever seen or heard of (lower than I ever had during any of my chemo or either of my transplants), and basically has little substance to her blood with such low counts.
In spite of all this, she seems to have stabilized between last night and tonight, but she still has a long road of recovery before she might be allowed to leave the hospital for a time, perhaps as early as next weekend, depending on how things progress. They did another bone marrow biopsy yesterday, the results of which should be available on Mon., and future treatment plans depend entirely on those results. If the results show no signs of leukemia, they will immediately proceed to an allogeneic stem cell transplant ASAP, which would probably take at least several weeks to find the donor and get everything ready. If she is doing well enough medically and is stable, she might be able to spend that wait time at home. If the biopsy results still show signs of leukemia, she will be scheduled for another 21 day chemo cycle, beginning with another week of 24/7 chemo, probably beginning the 1st weekend of August.
I am flying down tomorrow to spend several days with her, flying back as far as New Hampshire on Thu. for my next appt. at Dartmouth on Fri., then flying home to Maine. I would not be abe to do any of this with out the extraordinary generosity of the pilots and other volunteers of AngelFlight - thank you all for all that you do for all of cancer patients and their families! These pilots donate their time, the use of their planes, and pay for the fuel to fly patients to their medical appointments, and to see their critically ill family members. I am not sure when I will be able to post again, but I will attempt to do so ASAP, especially once the results of the bone marrow biopsy are in.
Thank you to all who are praying for me and my family during this time, and for mom's healing. Please know that while we can't respond to all of the emails, and phone calls are difficult for mom, she (and the rest of us!) appreciate all the praying you're doing on our behalf.
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