Counts way up!

Mina Brigitta's neutrophils are way up today! Yesterday's count was not a mistake after all. She went from 20 on Friday to 170 yesterday to 460 today! Also, her red cells and platelets were stable today, rather than declining. Her white counts can still bounce around over the next few days, but now there's no question that she's making blood again, so it's only a matter of days. The magic number for going home is neutrophils above 500 for three consecutive days.

That is, if she doesn't still have a fever. Her fever spiked to 40.7, or 105.2 last night. She was really burning up. But with Tylenol and cold compresses she actually had an OK day today. She spiked again early evening, but right now is resting very comfortably at 36. The infectious disease specialist spent some time with us today, basically telling us they don't know what's causing the fevers and may not ever find out. Sometimes the scans don't show anything until the white counts come back up, because what shows up is the immune response to the infection rather than the infection itself. They do frequently see fevers in immunosuppressed patients that go away as soon as the counts come back up. We're obviously hoping that's what Mina Brigitta has. I guess we just got lucky last year never having to deal with anything like this. Anyway, it seems like it's really not a moment too soon that her counts are coming up.

Grandma and Grandpa left Saturday. It was very sad to see them go, they were such a help while they were here and they really had some quality time with Mina & Isaac. I can tell she misses them. Luckily, Auntie Teri flew back down today. She always brings some sunshine into our lives. She'll be here until Wednesday. We don't have anyone scheduled after that, but with any luck we'll get to go home over the weekend so will be able to fend for ourselves.