Day 31

Another day of quiet.  Dr. B didn’t even get in to see Lanie until after 9:00 a.m. this morning.  Things are looking good with Lanie.  Her neutrophils are up to 300 today, and all the rest of her numbers are rising.  Her rash is just about gone, and only the infectious disease specialist came in today, outside of Dr. B.  The last two nights, though, Lanie has been getting hot and cold at the same time and can’t seem to get comfortable.  Also, her back is still hurting her some, but not near as much as it was before.  She has not needed Dilaudid as much as she was taking it before.  Her headaches are less frequent but still present.  Hopefully, the CSF leak is closing up.

Lanie was up a lot more today.  She did not sleep near as much during the day as she had been since the lumbar puncture headaches started.  She walked laps and did at least a half mile (last I saw) on the exercise bike.  She was riding the bike saying, “No blood clots here!”  The nurses were smiling and saw her biking hard, which was good since she was in bed for the past few days dealing with the debilitating head and neck ache.  Her appetite has been really good, especially since I made her a pot roast with carrots and potatoes.

Lanie’s favorite things to keep in stock right now are Eggo waffles, vanilla ice cream, coffee, tea, candy – Twix, Sour patch kids Extreme, Kit Kats, Dove, Reeses Peanut Butter cups — Reeses cereal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and as always Life cereal.  She always orders two or three whole milks from the cafeteria room service because the milk stocked in the fridge tastes funny (lol).  She also likes to keep Cool Blue Gatorade (my fave also), and Pringles.  So the very least I can do is try to keep her snacks in stock.  The hospital food got old after the first week.  It is funny when we call room service and order things, like tonight, cottage cheese and pears, 5 butters, 2 breakfast syrups, and one whole milk.  Yup, that was it!

Tomorrow she will hopefully get to come off the fluids.  The excitement in that is that she will be free from her IV pole.  She tends to get frustrated now everytime it beeps.  After a month of being confined to the hospital, I would imagine most people would be more distraught and frustrated than Lanie has shown.

Tonight I am going to write a post about her presentation.  I think many people might understand why we have been calling her leukemia “rare,” once I fill in the gaps.  Once I am through writing it, I will link it to certain areas throughout the daily posts.