The Road Ahead

30 days in the hospital

21 days post-transplant

Roger’s neutrophil count has increased to 400.  When it hits 500 and stays there for three days, they’ll start talking about discharging him from the hospital.

As Roger walks in the hospital corridor, I hear compliments echoing up and down the halls.  Seriously!  Doctors and nurses congratulate him on the fact that he’s been able to eat enough every day that he has not needed TPN (total parenteral nutrition) at all.  Apparently that is rare with bone marrow transplant patients.  He’s on bacon and eggs for breakfast again, so I hope we’re past the nausea and lack of appetite leg of this journey.

I’ve been so focused on getting Roger well enough to be discharged that I hadn’t thought much about how I’m going to take care of him once I’ve got him home.  I’ll be given an orientation to home care, including protecting him from germs and malnutrition, maintaining his IV lines and perhaps even giving him IV medications.  Yikes.  Have I mentioned that I never wanted to be a nurse?  This is not my forte.

They tell us that we should count on him being readmitted to the hospital once or twice before we’re done here.  Almost everybody comes back with an infection, graft versus host disease, or other complication.  That’s just the nature of a bone marrow transplant.  Knowing Roger, he’ll take that as a challenge; he’s got to prove himself to be more capable than the next guy. 

Are we half-way there?  Are we three-quarters of the way there? I wish I knew.