Friday, Aug 6

Today was another big day. G was to receive his PEG shot, another chemo drug. This would go right into his thigh muscles (both depending on his weight that day and dosage). I made sure to crawl my butt out of bed and get to the hospital by 8:00. The PEG could create pancreatitis, high blood sugar, and alterations of his clotting system (which he already had issues with). When entered his room Dr. Kwon walked in seconds behind me. He announced we could go home today. HUH? I froze and probably dropped my jaw. We still had not received his blood numbers for the day. The first thing out of my mouth was in regards to that. I said that I would feel more comfortable w that decision after we saw his blood counts. Then maybe hold on one more evening and leave early the next morning. I looked at Charito realizing I hadnt even consulted that decision before opening my big mouth. He gave me this nod (and this gleam in his eye like "good call, partner"). Kwon was okay with that and told us he would stop by later.

You are probably wondering why we didn't jump on the chance to get to escape when it was given...here is what went thru our minds:

• For a whole week now we received 1-2 reports a day with his numbers. Numbers that explained or would predict he would be weak or pale or whatever that day or the next. Warnings from plenty of people.


• His care was safely in the hands of professionals and a bit of ours. That was comforting. They were the ones who knew what to do.


• How would we know what to do? It was a very scary feeling as badly as I wanted to be home.


• We had arrangements for the evening for T n C and didnt want to interrupt that. T had already been missing us so much. A few meltdowns at gramma's. Tears to me on the phone that he missed me so much. Not easy for me to hear. I didnt want to just uproot him from what he had planned for the day, more disorganization and unexpected events were not what he needed.


• We knew his platelets were low on Thursday and wanted to be sure that would not be an issue over the weekend. We were not expected to return to the doctors til Tuesday. That seemed like such a long time to be without numbers and predictors. We have coined the term "living by the numbers", that is our way of life now. It predicts everything-how vulnerable he is to both the slightest and grandest of stimuli.
  

We called our families and told them the news but also made arrangements for T n C to meet us back at home early afternoon Saturday. I requested the nurses begin the discharge process so we were not waiting around for hours tomorrow for paperwork when we had been given the green light today. They agreed.

By lunch time we were handed his numbers for the day. Our gut was correct. His platelets dropped even more. At 15. Later that day he would receive a platelet transfusion. We would also keep an eye on his hemoglobin. It was 7.6 and we remembered them saying that 7 or below is when they do a hgb transfusion. (I should note that WBC cannot be transfused. It is the job of chemo to kill the leukemic cells/blasts which in turn attacks the WBC good or bad ones. G's WBC went haywire w the leukemia, did not know to stop multiplying both normal and abnormal / immature cells resulting in the ridiculously high amount we started the rollercoaster with). The transfusion occurred at 4 pm and at 7 pm the kidney specialist wrote us off. We were officially off his list. No more diruetic or meds to monitor uric acid levels in his urine. Kidneys were clean! Good news! Other good news-his WBC that day was 4.3! Boy did some WBC get fried or what? Mind you that is low in comparison for a normal count (5-19.5) but we were on the track on making sure leukemic cells were not taking over like they had when we were at 350+.

I went to bed still finding it hard to grasp we may be going home tomorrow. I couldnt get my hopes up. The numbers could change overnite...and they did.