Well I shouldn’t have said there was NO medical news today. Platelet counts bottomed yesterday and are already back over 60,000 which we take as evidence that engraftment has successfully begun. White counts have perhaps leveled at negligible so we’re back on Neupogen to bring them back. Anemia tolerable. This may be a no-transfusion case.

Of course the bowel will recover at whatever rate it chooses so I’m not in full celebratory mode. However, as with everything else so far I seem to be on a relatively short path to recovery.

Status quo on the persistent nausea and malaise – just can’t summon interest in swallowing anything much for fear it will reappear. Counts approaching nadir so platelet/RBC transfusion a daily discussion so far without need to squeeze the trigger. Did my laps around the unit today, wearing Huggies under regular pants.

However, out in the real world Nancy managed to snag passes to all three of the Red Rocks shows, the Deer Valley Show, and the Flagstaff Amphitheater show put on by the String Cheese Incident in July. Tickets are probably still available, but I’ll bet not for long. We won’t follow the tour into California and Oregon.

I’d never considered lorazepam an antiemetic drug but it did help pass several not-so-pleasant days. No emesis, a little retching, but a constant, constant nausea first from the melphalan and later from the DMSO in which the stem cells had been preserved. I managed sips of Garotade and an occasional Italian ice. Hoping to move up to something with more nutritional content today especially since the lower bowel sluough appears to have begun. We now enter what is forecast as the worst of the ordeal, so don’t expect many chipper reports.