Day Zero Plus Ten – First Fever

Jeff’s pain has traveled to his legs and he had a difficult night again last night.  Although the doctors are not sure what is causing his pain, they feel it is a result of the pre-transplant conditioning and only time will heal it.  Heating pads may help in the meantime.  Dr. Perl had explained that if they run tests to find the reason for the pain, the results might not be very accurate and treatment may not be appropriate at this time anyway.  He gave a wonderful explanation about this yesterday and I hope I have paraphrased it more or less accurately.

Today I have had several occasions to think of my sister, Judy, at age 6 or so.  Jeff tries very hard to eat but the pain meds are a challenge – he fell asleep mid-chew with his morning cereal, his mid-morning yogurt and his afternoon string cheese.  Judy used to fall asleep at the dinner table, sometimes landing face-first into her meal.  So cute, both Judy and Jeff!

Palmer and Greg visited this morning and Jeff grunted and “hmm’d” at appropriate points so that he fooled us into thinking he was actually following the conversation.  He may have caught some bits of news between Zzzzz’s.  Palmer and Greg joined me for lunch and I really appreciated the company.

Dr. Porter stopped by and encouraged Jeff to ride the bike even on these druggy days when he doesn’t feel like it.  “This is when you really need to push yourself,” he said.  After Dr. Porter left, Jeff was able to drink half of a Chocolate Ensure with half a pint of milk.  He says it was pretty disgusting.  Then he rode the bike and while he was upright, I rubbed his back.  Again he said it really seemed to help.  After 10 minutes of slow riding, he got back in bed and fell instantly to sleep again.

This afternoon Jeff developed a fever.  A chest x-ray was done at bedside and blood cultures were done.  There were two blood draws done: one by Nurse Tom from the Hickman catheter and another drawn peripherally by a phlebotomist.  Tom said that if the results don’t match, they’ll know that the infection is in his line. 

Nancy and Ken visited and joined Kerry and me for dinner.  We had a good visit and wondered together how Jeff’s donor is doing.  I hope she is doing alright. 

Having so much company today made a tough day bearable - for me, anyway.  The company may have helped Jeff pass the time but it was sometimes hard to tell how aware he was of their presence.