Don: Tomorrow morning (Sunday) will be day 9. Saturday was a long day. Karen has had a pain pump deliverying a low but steady amount of pain medicine since Friday. It is the kind of pump that allows her to hit the button when she needs a little more. The computer that controls this stuff makes sure she does not get more than the doctors will allow. She didn’t hit it much Friday or Saturday morning. Then came Saturday at noon.

Out of nowhere Karen started trying to throw up. Her throat has been so sore for a couple days from the 5 days of Total Body Radiation that she can’t eat. So she really came up dry. Our nurse today does not usually work the cancer floor. She was very friendly and really seemed to know her stuff. However, the cancer floor does things different than would be done in any other part of the hospital. This put the type of care we were used to getting at odds with what the nurse thought Karen should have. Let’s just say that it made a stressful situation even more stressful. I felt so bad for Karen. We both felt bad for our nurse after things settled down. She was trying very hard to do the right thing. There was another nurse that has taken a special interest in Karen (lot’s of them have) that came in and was able to give Karen the emotional support that she needed to settle her down.

After the nausea came a 4 hour nap. When she woke up from that she started running a fever. It is 6 hours later and she still has the fever. It has ranged from 100 to 103. The thing about a fever at this point is that it does not mean she must have caught a virus of some type. It is most likely a neutropenic fever because her blood counts are so low. She is achey all over but the medicine does take the edge off. We do need to try to keep the fever down but at least she is not ‘sick’. Blood counts are supposed to be down at this time. She can expect to have her most uncomfortable days from now through day 14. So about 5 more days.

Sorry for the unhappy report to pass on to our family and friends today. Still, we both are happy to be here instead of somewhere else and thank God that we are here. Our prayers are that we have a long and happy life. We would not expect to go home cancer free without having gone through this treatment. So please just pray for Karen to be as comfortable as she can be while her body does what it needs to do to except the new blood.