Wednesday 9th March 2011

Luke is much better in relation to the infection. He has had no more temperatures which is great. He is still on antibiotics. The latest theory is that when blood culture samples were taken from Luke's central line - the saline that they use to flush the line after using it would have flushed the toxins that were in the central line through his system. As this was done a few hours before the central line came out this is what caused the sceptic reaction.

Yesterday the general surgeons came to see about operating on Luke's ingrown big toe toenails. He was neutropenic based on blood samples from the day before and they said they wouldn't operate when his neuts were so low. That afternoon when new blood test results were back, his neuts were 1.6. So the surgeons decided to go ahead this morning. Murray went in to hospital with him. He was in recovery for quite a while. All is good and he now has two bandaged toes. He came back from surgery and was very groggy and slept for about 3 hours. He has some "moon shoes" - basically a strapped on shoe to put on. He has been getting up to go to the toilet however he has just called us to say that his toes are bleeding a bit and he's been told to stay in bed overnight to let scabs form properly. He's also in a bit of pain so they will hopefully keep the pain killers up to him. He said he won't be getting much sleep as they have told him they are going to come in every hour to look at his toes and test his feeling in his feet and other toes and to make sure blood circulating okay.

It was actually my birthday today. I had to go into the city on a human resources course that I am currently undertaking. Amy was working this afternoon/evening so Murray took me out for a nice dinner. So I had a fairly low key celebration.

I'll head into hospital tomorrow morning to spend the day with Luke. At this stage we've been told it will probably be Saturday before he can come home so we'll wait and see if that happens. He has also been told that the maintenance chemo has been put off for another week so this will probably start up on Monday 21st March.