Waiting Game

Carla's white blood count has been going up each day but it is slooow!  Sunday it was 0.05, Monday 0.09 and today it was a whopping 0.29.  It has to be above 2.0 before we can move on towards harvesting stem cells.

The past two days Carla has been fighting a low fever.  When we went back for the 5:00 growth hormone shot today, they took a blood sample for a culture.  They want to see if she has an infection of some kind.  They did that twice last week but the cultures did not reveal anything.

I thought I would let you know more about the Central Venous Line that was installed in Carla back on the Monday before Thanksgiving.

Central Venous Line

As you can see Carla has three ports.  This allows the nurses to readily access her vein for getting blood samples, inputting an IV or giving a platelet transfusion.  They take care that this does not get infected.  The covering is dated when applied and is changed regularly.  We have large pieces of clear plastic that has adhesive edges for covering this when Carla takes a shower.

Carla gets an IV antibiotic each morning in 7C.  She takes antiviral medicine morning and night.  Since she first had a fever, they have been sending a thing called an infuser home with us.  The infuser reminds me of a baby bottle with a balloon inside containing the medicine.  I can disinfect Carla's port and attach the infuser.  This is one way she can get the equivalent of an IV at home.  We first had a potassium infuser which took 5 hours to empty.  Now we have two antibiotic infusers each day that only take 30 minutes to empty.

Infuser

Before the stem cells are harvested, the CVL will have to be replaced by a Quinton catheter.  The Quinton catheter has two large ports.  The flow of blood out of her body and into her body is much faster than IV's so it necessitates larger ports.  Hopefully her WBC will get above 2.0 and she can be fitted for this Quinton catheter soon.