Thursday, July 06, 2006

Day +1

My Today Blood Count:
Red Blood Count (RBC) 84 (Normal 130-180)
Platelet 57 (Normal 150-50)
White Blood Count (WBC) 2.2 (Normal 4 - 11)

I am well today, managed to sleep a few hours in the afternoon. But of course not continuous sleep, I have to wake up many times to pass urine. "Why so much urine to pass?." In fact they infuse (transfers through the lumen that I mentioned earlier) 6 litres of solution into my body each day. The solution contains water plus 0.9% Sodium Chloride and 5% Glucose. The hospital sometime also add potassium and magnesium, but definately not GOLD into the solution due to the deficiency of these mineral in my blood. In addition to what I drink, my total water intake is about 9 to 10 litre per day. I gains 2 kg this morning due to fluid retention, the nurse injected a drug called Lasix to make me pass urine almost every 15 minutes initially :-(

The next 21 days or more will be very crucial. It is the waiting period for the new stem cells to engraft. During this period my white blood count will drops until zero rendering myself without immunity at all. Another component of blood are red blood cells which are used to carry oxygen to the organs and tissues of the body. The third component is called platelet. It helps blood to clot. All of these blood components will drop as well. However, the red blood cell and platelet are easier to handle. They can be transfused if the level drops to an unacceptable level. There is no way to transfuse white blood cell. We can only wait for the body to grows. A drug called growth factor might be able to speed up the white cells formation. It will be given daily to me from day +5, 10 July onwards until my white cell count increase to 2.

Apart of Cyclosporin to reduce the GVHD, today they added a drug called Methotrexate (MTX). This drug is a chemo drug but they give me in small dosage. The purpose is also to reduce GVHD in this case. However, this drug will cause severe mouth ulcer. Luckily, it does not have to be given daily. We pray that severe mouth ulcer will not occurs.

I also notice my face turned darker each day. It should be due to chemo effect. Please don't blame me to be too serious next time you meet me. The face turned dark by itself, not by me:-)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Ting,

Glad to hear that you are doing fine. My wife suggested that you post your medical progress and experince to AML's sufferers website, if there is one, to help patients anticipate and expect what they will be going through to better prepare themselves. Your tremendeous faith in god shall carry you through this period.
Take care.

regards,

Tiong YK

David said...

Dear Tiong,

Thanks for the good suggestion and I would be most glad to do it. How to do so, or do you have a particular web site in mind?

David

Anonymous said...

Dear David

Praise the Lord for showing His grace in on you. " Be strong and of good courage" for our Lord Jesus Christ is with you.

Pastor Long Kim Hai

Anonymous said...

Hi David,

Thanks God for His mercy and healing. You and your family are always in our prayer.

-kokhuan & wanying

Anonymous said...

HI Ah Kiew,

Glad to hear all went well with the transplant. With your cheery and positive attitude, the battle is already won. We offer up our suffering to God and He'll pave the way.

hang in there and remember, God loves you.

Adriana

Anonymous said...

Dear David,

So relief to know that you are doing fine, so impressed and touched by your positive attitude in your healing process, what a brilliant idea to have this web site set up for all of us!

We will continue pray for your speeding recovery and trust that God will let us have our healty David back to us, to lead our worship and praise in the Sunday service, to share in our cell group....

Take good rest and we miss you a lot.

In God We Trust,
Grace

David said...

Thanks Grace and everyone for the encouraging comments. There are two things to thank God.
1. I notice that my WAD is under the hospital open internet WIFI coverage, only after one week I have been in the wad.
2. I inititally thought of making our church www.mypcac.org as a platform to update my condition. But the site is expiring and it is going for transplant also - moving to a cheaper web host service provider.

Therefore, by God grace I quickly go to search for a place to blog my status. It tooks me about 2 hours to set up the first blog :-) and I feel happy to be able to talk to so many of you :-)

Anonymous said...

Dear Ting,

Glad to hear that you are progressing well. It is just a suggestion, I do not know any AML's website.
Take care.

regards,

Tiong YK

Anonymous said...

Great site loved it alot, will come back and visit again.
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