Day 3: Treatment update

Now back to the treatment.

After the first treatement where they pull out the white blood cells from her blood, her white blood cell count went down from 279,000 to about 179,000. After her second though she only went down to 159,000. They said sometimes after the initial pull the cells start to stick and are more difficult to pull out and separate manually.

Also due to this they are doubling her cheomotherapy medication from once to twice a day. Again, the chemothereapy is just a small pillform where she doesn't have any side effect since its so small. They are also doing the chemo first until they can get the actual diagnosis for CML. Only once diagnosed can she get the actual treatment which will attack the specific wild chromosome that has her white blood cell factory going full-bore.

Tessa is in good spirits. My family pitched in and got her a Kindle Fire and with the Wi-Fi in the hospital it helps just looking through pintrest and passing the time on facebook and such. Cafeteria food is getting old fast. The Dordt Commons food actually looks pretty good now in comparison :)   but we've been sneaking some burger king and HyVee chinese :)

Talking with Dr. Vinod (her hemotologist), he believes by friday we should get the results from the bone marrow biopsy and get her the diagnosis. From there hopefully her white blood cell count will go down enough so that she can go home saturday with the prescription and everything else will be just checkups in pipestone and visits to sioux falls only once every three months.

Thats about it. We're sitting through her blood separation treatement right now. a little dinner and a little rest and the rest of the day is open. Heard from a few more people planning to visit so its keeping our spirits up more. With more visitors I might just peel out for a bit. I never want Tessa to be a lone in this but I have to admit I'm getting stir crazy at the hospital. Especially being a Mr. Fixit control freak who cant control or fix anything thats going on.

I think this will be it for updates today. I'll probably write more again from 11-12 tommorow during this treatment again.

God's blessings on all of you. Truly I understand now more than ever what it means to belong to a community of believers and living in communion with the saints with all the prayers, love, and support we've recieved. You never fully understand or appreciate it until you yourself are sitting in the hospital recieving it all. We are truly blessed.