Fever better, another dressing change required

Had to change Mina Brigitta's dressing on her catheter exit site for the third day in a row. She absolutely hates it, because it requires pulling off a 6 square-inch piece of really sticky tape, and then cleaning the site with an alcohol-like substance. Normally they would only have to do it once a week, but the problem is that she's so active that the line starts pulling out of the dressing. When it comes out far enough and there's no more slack underneath the tape, any further pulling would tug at the site, causing discomfort, bleeding, infection, line failure, or other bad things. We're trying a new technique tonight with a second piece of tape, so maybe this one will be more secure.

Her fevers were gone today, so whatever it was that caused the spike yesterday seems to be gone too. This is great news, let's just hope they stay away. She had kind of a rough day today. She took an early nap that was too short. On top of that, she's very low on red blood, so that makes her tired and cranky. And she's back on all of the antibiotics which probably doesn't help. She's right at the edge of needing a transfusion of both red blood and platelets. But they didn't drop much from yesterday, and her white cells actually increased a little (though white counts are notoriously volatile). That may be a sign that she's starting to recover, so they held off in the hopes of being able to avoid the transfusions altogether. It's better not to get them if possible, because there's some chance her body could develop a chronic allergic reaction, which would be bad going into the transplant.

Speaking of the transplant, no firm news about the date or the donor yet. Maybe we'll hear something from them tomorrow. For now, we're just assuming that the 27th will be the date and really hoping it won't be any later.