First of all, I highly, highly encourage/request/plead with everyone, especially in the Seattle area, to go visit Kristina (see the info in the previous post). I spoke to her again Wednesday afternoon, and she sounds very upbeat – even a little twitchy, in fact, but she says that’s the dilantin, which makes her feel a little goofy in terms of nervous energy and occasional vertigo.
My point is, she can have visitors, she would love visitors, and for right now she feels basically good. Her meds will change this weekend to something more toxic, and as she told me, she “will be miserable any day now.”
Just call before you come, to make sure she’s in the room. If she doesn’t answer, call back in a few minutes, as she may be either walking laps around the hallway or in the shower or gone for a procedure of some sort.
By the way, if anybody reading this has a spare phone-message machine, she’d love to have that.
So, the medical news is all pretty good at this point. Her weekly chest x-ray was clear, and the following blood numbers, she tells me, are what they should be at this point. She says these will gradually go down to almost zero – the reason for chemotherapy in anticipation of the transplant on Nov. 13. The reason there’s a one-year recovery from this is that her body has to rebuild these numbers to where they should be.
As always, the normal range here is in parentheses:
White blood cells: 5.41 (4.3 - 10)
HCT: 33 (36 - 45)
ANC: 3.92 (1.8 - 7)
Platelets: 81 (150 - 400)
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