Help Vinay & Sameer

It’s Day +16, and all’s well….I’ve actually started engrafting!! My neutrophil count (the part of my white blood cells that fight infection) had literally gone down to 0.00 a few days ago, but then began to rebound over the past 3 days. First it went to 10, then 30, then 50, then 280. In the meantime, my overall white blood cell count climbed all the way to 1000.

The preceding days (between 8 and 16) were all pretty much as I described in my earlier post. Fortunately, I didn’t develop any major mouth sores and I was able to sleep with my newfound nightly “cocktail”. Miraculously, I haven’t had any diarrhea or nausea either. Yes, I am very lucky! Some of you must be saying some special anti-diarrhea mantras for me or something, because that’s just something you get with chemo.

I told the doctors 3 days ago that my goal was to be home by my birthday. They asked, “Have any plans?”, to which I said no, and they retorted, “Better start making some!”. By Wednesday, they told me that they were targeting Friday (today) as my discharge date! I was amazed and surprised - and incredibly excited to get to go home. I haven’t actually minded the time in the hospital much; I’ve been terribly busy and behind with work (lots of good stuff going on with the company!). But you do feel cooped up after a while here.

(In classic Sambastyle, I did negotiate for the hospital to lift up the permanent Venetian blinds that are wedged between the double windows in our room so that we could fully enjoy the beautiful view of the Montlake Cut and Lake Union. It took me 2 weeks to accomplish this, but the best part was that every nurse who has walked into my room since has asked me how the heck I managed to get those blinds up. “I just always tell my patients it’s impossible!” they say. Small victory but big joy )

As far as getting home, I was most excited by the idea that my neutrophils would go up, my mouth would heal, and I would be able to start eating again! Reena and I got excited and began trying to figure out how to pack all our stuff, and started making plans for the weekend.

This morning, I noticed that my throat had pretty much completely healed. However, my mouth still felt a little cut up, not healed completely as I was hoping. The doctors came in and told me my neutrophil count had actually dropped from 280 to 80. They said this was not cause for alarm; it’s possible the neutrophils being produced were being deployed to heal various parts of the body.

Now their prediction is that I should be out in 2-3 days. Let’s hope it’s less than 2! In the meantime, no issues. We’ve got plenty to do - I still haven’t read any of the magazines or books I’ve been getting since May!