Thursday 11th February 2010

Luke and I had a very disruptive night's sleep last night. The normal time that Luke seems to be getting to sleep is around 11.30pm. I've tried coaxing him to get to sleep earlier and that he must be tired but he says he isn't. Admittedly the nurse didn't wake him up to take his temperature at the normal 2am which was a godsend however the fire alarm went off at 4.45am and sounded for about 10 minutes. Very loud!! It turned out to be a false alarm in the radiation and oncology area downstairs. Then he had his usual 6am blood taking and 7.30am breakfast and tablet run at 8am.

Luke had a day off from chemo which was great. However he did not escape getting pumped with drugs. It seems that a blood test showed the protein in his blood to be sitting at 80. When he came in his level was 120. Dr Dipti came around and said that they would start treating this now as if the level drops below 60 he has a high risk of developing blood clots that can travel around the body and obviously what we don't want is a clot developing in or going to the brain.

The other problem he has at the moment is his sugar levels are at 19. I can't remember what a normal level should be (I know it was something with a single digit) so they are concerned about that and if it doesn't settle down he will need to have insulin. He has been having a few lollies and quite a bit of apple juice so we'll try and limit this to see if it has any impact. They have said that the prednisone (cortico steroids) that he is on do cause your blood sugar to increase and they have decided to decrease this daily dosage a bit.

Blood levels for today:
haemoglobin 100 /white cell count 0.8 /platelets 46 /neutrophils 0.30

He is still eating well and his weight has remained stable. However he is getting really light headed and is very weak when he walks to the toilet and shower. We have been trying to get him walking around but he hates the masks he has to wear when he leaves the acute ward (due to him being neutropenic - subject to picking up infections). We need to get him up and moving so that his muscles don't deteriorate too much as well as to avoid blood clots. Having said all of this he actually looks pretty good in himself - nowhere near as pale as he was a week ago.

I think I've hit the wall today as I am really tired and feeling a bit off - so I stayed clear of Luke this afternoon/evening when Amy and I delivered Murray's dinner. I'm about to go and have a soak in the bath and have an early night.