Day 2 2nd HUP Stay

Dear friends and family,

Just wanted to let you all know Bob's doing fine. He's on the Nurse Practitioner (NP) service this time, which Dr. Stadtmauer oversees(some of you remember him from Debs' stays). Anyway Dr.S. and the NPs' were in today and decided that Bobs' Hickman cath should be removed after hearing about the bad episode he had last evening w/ the fever and rigors(uncontrollable shivers and chills). Even though there weren't any cultures back they didn't want to chance Bob getting a blood sepsis, and if the line didn't come out today, it would've had to wait til Monday, since it had to be removed down in IR(interventional radiology). So he went down and had it removed uneventfully, and has remained afebrile since than. His vitals are all stable, his appetite is, need I say, unaffected, and his counts are all okay. The platelets dropped to 27,00, but that's due to the infection. His wbs'c are 3.2 and ANC is 750, which is also probably up from the infection, though not even to a normal level yet. The plan right now is wait and see what the cultures show, monitor his temps and counts. If he remains afebrile, he may come home after the weekend. Theproblem is that he is most likely going to need IV antibiotics for some time, and he will have to have a line placed for that. Unfortunately they can not put in a central line if there's any possibility of blood infection, b/c that line will become infected also. So they may place a PICC line in his arm. He's had that before when recovering from his leg wound 2 yrs. ago, and he can get the ABX at home thru that. So we're playing the waiting game for the weekend.
In the meantime he has his cd's(Gilbert&Sullivan and Barber of Seville), dvd's(Victory at Sea....the whole series which I found at Wal-Mart for 5 dollars) and novel(that same series his nurse Ethan recommended the last stay) to occupy the evening hours which he seems to find is the longest part of the day. He's not doing the sudoku this time around, even though he still does them at home. There's a little less adjusting this time, since he knows the routine and what to expect, and also knows the staff. Even those who aren't his nurses this time have stopped in to say hello and congrats on the remission, and as usual they are all wonderful.

Well, that's all the news for now. As always,please keep us in your prayers, as well as our darling Debbie, who has made the very courageous decision to have a mini(ha!) stem-cell transplant and will be admitted on 7/19 to begin that risk-laden procedure. We are all recipients of our own mini-miracles and have seen what the power of prayer can do. Deb, I know you are going to sail through this b/c all the love and friendship you've given of so freely is going to come back and carry you through. I just feel it. I'll give you a call tomorrow to take you up on that cosmo offer.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. The weather's supposed to cooperate for a change. Enjoy it.

All our love,
Bob and Mo