Wednesday 21 April 2010

Not much to report. Luke is doing okay but has been neutropenic all week and pretty weak. He had 2 units of blood on Sunday and this meant 6 hours in hospital while they cross checked his blood and the transfusions went through. So when this happens it's pretty boring for him and me. I actually got to read the Sunday paper from cover to cover though which I haven't done in a long time!

Murray and Amy went for their flu injections on Friday (I had mine with work a few weeks ago). But we are finding that we are all having symptoms of a flu - bit blocked up/sore throat but nothing really developing into anything serious. For the last few days Luke has been saying he has a sore throat. Not a great deal we can do to protect him from infections while he is neutropenic - other than pack us all up to live somewhere else and leave him by himself! As someone once told us we can't wrap him in cotton wool all the time and as he is used to 'our' germs, home is the best and safest place for him.

Blood levels for the week are:
Haemaglobin - 14 Apr - 93/15 Apr - 83/17 Apr - 71 /18 Apr - 69/19 Apr - 83
White Blood Cells - 14 Apr - 1.2/15 Apr - 0.6/17 Apr - 0.5/18 Apr - 0.6/19 Apr - 0.6
Platelets - 14 Apr - 166/15 Apr - 133/17 Apr - 90/18 Apr - 90/19 Apr - 69
Neutrophils - 14 Apr - 0.68 / 15 Apr - 0/17 Apr - 0/18 Apr - 0/19 Apr - 0.11

You will notice the 16th and 20th April have no levels. On the 16th he was due to have the nurse come home to take bloods but she was off sick and no-one called to tell us she wouldn't be coming. Yesterday (20th) he went into hospital but they couldn't get blood out of his central line - they didn't seem too concerned and said they'd get it today. We are just waiting on the nurse to come out now.
I'd assume that he may need to have more transfusion of blood and possibly platelets in the next few days.

Mum & Dad got a call last night from her sister who had been over in Australia on holiday. They were on their way back to the UK but got stranded in Singapore due to the volcano. It seems that their only option is to come back to Australia as the first flight they can get on back to the UK is the 6 or 7th May. Whilst it would be good to see Mal and Les again and spend more time with them I hope they manage to get on an earlier flight as it really is a long delay and Les was due back at work last week.