Day +10

My Blood Count Today:
Red Blood Count (RBC) 106 (Normal 130-180)
Platelet 18 (Normal 150-50)
White Blood Count (WBC) =0.1 (Normal 4 - 11)

I am well today. The appeptite remains good. The WBC increased from less than 0.1 to 0.1. Even though the increment looks small but it is a very signification improvement. Prayerfully, it would increase to about 0.2 or further tomorrow. The platelet count drops by 1 even with transfusion yesterday.

I received transfusions of another 6 units of platelet today. Each unit of platelet is separated from the full blood from a single donor. So, 6 units of platelet have to be from 6 different donors. The earlier platelet transfusions were all from a single donor who just donated their plalelets through a filter machine while the rest of the blood components were return to the donor body. Single donor platelet is of higher quality compared to multiple units of platelets from different donor.

The iv drugs that I am still receiving are cyclosporin for GVHD, antibiotic Tazocin, 4 litres of normal saline, potassium and magnesium. The oral drugs are sleeping pill called Lorazepam , Antiviral drug called Acyclovir and Antifungal drug called Itraconazole. In addition, the Neupogen is given by injection to stimulate the bone marrow to produce white blood cells.

Normally, after the nurse "unwired" me in the morning, I have about an hour of precious freedom moment to move around in the room and to take bath. Before taking bath, I would do about 5 to 10 minutes of cycling. Since my platelet count dropped below 20, the nurse no longer allowed me to cycle to prevent bleeding.

Now, I changed my morning exercise to playing the two sport cars as shown in the picture. I purchased the toys for the children the night before I was admitted to hospital for transplant. The sport cars are made in China, 6 units cost about RM8.00 only. Even though they are cheap, they are incredibly fun to play. I saw the children playing, but did not have time to join them as it was too late. I need to prepare for the admission. I asked my wife to borrow two of the sport cars from the children for me to play in the WAD. The nurse won't bother to play with me, so I have to play alone :-(

The sport cars are equipped with good spring, you just press them against the floor and push backward quickly and then release, they will run forward with a very high speed. The right one shown in the picture will even make a beautiful turn for you before it speeds off. They can run very far and my room is really too small to play them. So they always end up colliding the wall, of course without getting damaged :-) I would spend about 10 minutes chasing after these two sport cars until I almost sweat before I go to take bath.

One idea to play the sport car is to place a chair at one end of the room and speed off the car from the other end of the wall, aiming the car to the chair, estimating whatever turn that the car might make. If the car goes through between any two legs of the chair, then it is considered a "goal". Please be warned that if you use a single legged chair, no matter how smart you are, you would never strike a goal. Another idea is to place more than one chairs from one end of the room to the other, the more chairs the car passes through the more point one gets. To make the game more interesting to play, the room has to be very big and vacant. With this, you can enjoy "Family-Cup" everyday with your children :-)

If you want to know where to get the sport cars, just let me know, I will tell you where they are available.

See you next post.