Certainly No April Fool's Joke

I'm not particularly sure where to start so do excuse me for the train wreck of a path of thought you will be processing in a moment.  Tom has been itching to get out of here since he set foot in here. He has come up with many of reasons as to why he should be either a. allowed to go home earlier than everyone else or b. allowed to go home for a couple of hours if he promises to come back.  He has told the doctor that he lives closer so he is less at risk than those who live an hour or more away, he says it would make his atitude better and his overall mental status better for recovery, he even told the doctor (which the following is true) that all of the women (the bmt ward is full of women and their family members visiting) on the ward have been telling him that he is "too good looking to be in here" and that he must go home so that everyone else can feel better about themselves!  The doctor of course asked for some names as to who were saying these things, but truly it's been everyone... he's quite the heart-throb around here! 

Lastly, he told him the other day, "Look, Ken (a patient he knows outside of here) got out of here at post 17, so I'm going to beat him and I'm leaving Saturday."  The doctor who has been telling him much differently each time he gets Tom's ideas submitted for review, looked at the board, looked at Tom, and finally replied, "That's not impossible."  He told Tom to expect to see his counts coming up toward the latter end of this week, Tom replied, "I'll be on the board by Tuesday."  The doc chuckled and again said something to the effect of it not being expected, but not being impossible. Typically speaking, white blood cell counts don't start to rise until about day +14 and yesterday was only day +9 making Tuesday only day +11.

Well if Tom's determination wasn't enough, I did recall his massage therapist who used to come around, using some frankencense oil on him before and saying it stimulates blood cell production.  She however has been MIA since we've been in and no one seems to have a clue what has happened to her. Yesterday, after Easter Mass and having a word with the big guy upstairs and lighting a few candles for Tom, I went on a stroll. I'm looking around for somewhere to either be nosy about or find a bite to eat.  A place catches my eye with a sign that reads Brunch, I look and it looks to possibly be a religious establishment which I was on the fence about venturing into.  I look closer and it just says, "mind, body, and spirit."  So I declared it safe, but walked in very cautiously.  Greeted by three women who said, "Wanna know what this is all about?"  I replied, "I'm wanting to know about brunch."  The woman who'd greeted me verbally then stood up and said, "I'll show you the way!"  She led me through a beautiful courtyard and past a few rooms, one of which I could smell various scented oils so I asked, "Do you sell oil? If so, do you have frankencense?"  I'll quickly wrap this bit of the story up with saying, ladies and gentlemen, I found the missing masseuse!!!! She was there!!!!  I also happened to find the most heavenly and I mean heavenly french toast at this wholistic place that I have ever encountered in my life... if you could be enlightened by food, that's what happened to me yesterday.  Anyway, the sweet lady gave me a free little bottle of frankencense and told me to massage just a tiny bit into Tom's feet (which the thought of feet is repulsive to me, but I did it out of love and determination). 

Last night, after telling everyone about how well Tom was doing minus these awful sores in his throat that are making it impossible for him to even swallow his own saliva without the feeling of razor blades in his esophagus.... I clearly had spoken too soon.  He ended up registering with a fever of 101.4.  They start blood cultures and broad spectrum antibiotics at 100.4 so when he came in at the 101.4 level they of course did all of those things.  They said that the sores can cause a spike in temperature due to the inflammation they cause, so he might not necessarily have an "infection" but it takes about two-three days to grow the cultures to know for sure so the antibiotics must be going as a precautionary measure.  Then the nurse said, "Also sometimes when your bone marrow starts to reproduce again, it can cause a spike of a fever." 

Ladies and Gents... Our Easter miracle this year.... Around 5:00am his lab reports came back and Tom registered in at 0.1 White Blood Cells!!!!!! A day early to his goal that was seen as highly skeptical by the doctor.  Since then he has dropped back down in temperature and his last reading was 99.6 I believe so let us keep those prayers going that the fever was just due to that marrow kicking in!!!  On the flip side, having those white blood cells means they're now combatting those throat sores which is a good thing as they'll be gone sooner, but it also means they're quite a bit more painful today.  But WOHOO!!!! He never ceases to amaze me what he can do with some determination, he always manages to show the doctors that it's not always what they think. Though I did tell him I'm going to take a little credit for the frankencense foot rub haha. 

This is the board they put his counts on every morning. That was supposed to be 0.0 for a few more days!!!!!

Though long, I hope you felt this blog well worth it.  Hope you've all had a wonderful and blessed Easter Holiday!

-Laura