Posted by Becky
Leif's definitely doing better. His neutrophil (i.e. the part of his immune system that's working) count is up past the threshhold where his body can fend off infection. His platelets are still hanging down - he got one unit of them today. He looks better in person as well as on paper; he spent the day in a chair rather than in bed. He was able to enjoy his visitors and phone calls. He's on less oxygen than he was, so his lungs are improving. There was quite a bit of fluid in his lungs; that's clearing out, although he still has pneumonia.
They will reduce his steroids gradually and see how he does.
The echocardiogram showed some fluid around his heart. They're going to just monitor that; nothing needs to be done about it at this time.
The vision in Leif's right eye is improving, although it's still providing some special effects to go along with the visual hallucinations he gets from the vorconazole. He's also still pretty fatigued. That causes him to doze off while sitting up, and see dreams overlaid on what's going on around him. Never a dull moment.
Looking forward, Leif needs to recover thoroughly from this infection before going forward with any more lymphoma treatment. He needs to be hale and hearty going into the stem cell transplant, since that's more rigorous than what he's done so far.They are likely to give him some "gentle" chemotherapy between now and the transplant to keep the cancer at bay, depending on how long it takes for him to get strong enough.
And now, a couple of photos from this week's adventure:
Friday night, smokin' his nebulizer to enhance his oxygen uptake. Note the fancy white plastic moustache. He got a nebulizer of lidocaine right before his bronchoscopy, too, enhanced by a Q-tip of lidocaine gel resting in each nostril. I was not bold enough to take a camera into the ICU to take a photo of that.
Today: up, at the computer, and smiling. Go Leif!
Leif's definitely doing better. His neutrophil (i.e. the part of his immune system that's working) count is up past the threshhold where his body can fend off infection. His platelets are still hanging down - he got one unit of them today. He looks better in person as well as on paper; he spent the day in a chair rather than in bed. He was able to enjoy his visitors and phone calls. He's on less oxygen than he was, so his lungs are improving. There was quite a bit of fluid in his lungs; that's clearing out, although he still has pneumonia.
They will reduce his steroids gradually and see how he does.
The echocardiogram showed some fluid around his heart. They're going to just monitor that; nothing needs to be done about it at this time.
The vision in Leif's right eye is improving, although it's still providing some special effects to go along with the visual hallucinations he gets from the vorconazole. He's also still pretty fatigued. That causes him to doze off while sitting up, and see dreams overlaid on what's going on around him. Never a dull moment.
Looking forward, Leif needs to recover thoroughly from this infection before going forward with any more lymphoma treatment. He needs to be hale and hearty going into the stem cell transplant, since that's more rigorous than what he's done so far.They are likely to give him some "gentle" chemotherapy between now and the transplant to keep the cancer at bay, depending on how long it takes for him to get strong enough.
And now, a couple of photos from this week's adventure:
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