No more masks (Day +15)

Another day, another overflowing social calendar. Max had visits today from the physiotherapist, the social worker, oma, opa and mapa. Until we leave hospital, Max will have physiotherapy sessions a couple of times a week to try and get his body back into gameday shape. Given that he has spent close to the last four weeks in bed he did exceptionally well in today's session to stand for 20 minutes playing toy car park manager. 

Max has let it be known that jigsaw puzzles with less than 50 pieces are no longer a challenge to him anymore. Today he received his first 100 jigsaw piece puzzle. Needless to say it did not stay unsolved for very long.

With Max having achieved neutrophil counts of over 0.5 for more than three consecutive days his transplant has now reached the stage of 'engraftment'. This is confirmation that the donor cord blood cells have found their way to the inside of Max's bones and have started producing new blood cells and is another major milestone on Max's road to recovery. It also means that visiting doctors, nurses and other staff no longer have to wear surgical masks in the room, which Max certainly prefers. As a consequence of the good neutrophil counts, the doctors have decided to take Max off his antibiotics and reduce the strength of his G-CSF (it boosts white blood cell production) injection. If this goes well, they'll take him off the antifungal drug 'amphotericin' later this week. We also lowered his Morphine dosage, and unlike last week, he showed no additional signs of discomfort afterwards. 

The latest counts:

White cell count: 2.6 (6.0-17.0)
Neutrophils:  1.73 ** (1.5-8.5)
Haemoglobin: 89 (110-140) *
Platelets: 13 (150-400) *

Normal ranges in brackets
* transfusions are topping these levels up at the moment, so they are not a true indication of where he is at.

** Down a little but given the previous big jump, it was to be expected.

Thankyous

• To Marg and John and the rest of the clan for the cool magnetic book and LEGO!!!.

cheers,

Tim