Put her on ice!

I'm happy to say that today got better as the day went on. This morning was rough. Mom had a temp of 102 and a terrible headache, which made her sick to her stomach. The nurse called it a neutropenic headache. A what?

The chemo is killing off the white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell. Neutropenic is when the number of neutrophils in the bloodstream drops very low. It stops the ability to fight infection (why she has limited exposure to people/germs). Mom has been neutropenic for so long (over 10 days), her body is just reacting to the stress. How was that for an explanation!  :)

The nurses brought in some ice and packed it all around her. It dropped to 100 by 10:30 a.m. and by noon it was down to 98. Fever means infection, and infection is what we don't need. She doesn't have anything to fight it. The headache finally went away this afternoon, too.

Dr. Jeong did not like that fever, either. He seemed very concerned... which really gives you a pit in your stomach! He is having an infection specialist come in and check her over. We still don't have the results of the bone marrow biopsy. "Thursday or Friday we'll get it" he said today. He also explained how this type of leukemia/chemo is different from others. Most of the time, you do a bone marrow test on the 14th day and you can see if all the cancer cells are gone. What Mom has differs in that there is no certain day to do the bone marrow biopsy. Did he do it too early? Possibly. If the results come back and there are still cancer cells swimming around, then he will do another biopsy in a week and be able to tell if they will all disappear. Either way she will have a couple more rounds of chemo.

For now, we make sure to keep Mom as comfortable as we can. Once that headache and temperature were gone, she perked right up, ate a little lunch and read some cards. Thank you to everyone out there who sends her cards, e-mails and good wishes. They sure do boost her spirit!