Wow it has been a crazy day. I went to work this morning then to the hospital for the day and went back to work for the afternoon, made supper, went to wal-mart to fill Robs prescriptions, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom. I am exhausted. Rob is home now his brother and sister in-law are here and were at the hospital all day so they drove him home.
Today Rob's white blood count was really high 9.6 so they took his stem cells out. He sat hooked up to a machine that took blood out and put the blood back in. They were looking for a 555 billion stem cell count, they went past 570 billion. He was on the machine for about 4 hours which is really good, normally it is longer than that and this process can last up to 3 days 6 hours a day.
Something I learned the other day that was really interesting I thought I would share it with you. Stem cells turn into other cells, and nutrifils are part of the white blood cell, that is actually your immune system. Rob has lots of nutrifils, right now so his immune system is ok. The nutrifils are the mature stem cells, so they know that you have had that cold before, and that vaccine before. They are going to give him one more shot of chemo and then give him his stem cells back. It will kill all remaining cells and that is why he will have to have vaccines again because his stem cells wont know that he has had them. It is like a bone marrow transplant with your own stem cells. It will be really hard on his body because it will be so confused. Rob had another platelet transfusion today, because they were too low and his blood wouldn't clot. He had a reaction to it, he had rashes all over but they cleared after some time.
I cracked today, Rob didn't want to get up and move, or eat. I snapped there were some words exchanged and he ate everything on the plate. Then the doctor visited him and told him to go home. Imagine that he did just fine, and he is doing really well now. I think you lose the fight in the hospital because you know they will fight for you if something goes wrong.
There was a question in the comments on the last blog and he gets his stem cells back in May and the projected date to leave the hospital is May 19, just in time for our 6 anniversary, too bad we wont be doing anything for that. He has to be really careful about where he goes and what he eats. See God is really smart we aren't born with teeth so we can't eat vegetables unless they are soft and fully cooked, which means they would have been washed and all bugs would have been removed. You wouldn't give your baby mayo, or jam because they wont be eating toast or sandwiches. Rob has to watch what he eats, like really wash the lettuce and tomato. He can only have condiments if they are individually packaged. So see your baby wouldn't have to worry about all the things that could go wrong with food. Rob has to watch because he will have a weak immune system.