Today is day T+13. Eric is doing well, but is a little uncomfortable. The doctors said it can be painful to regrow bone marrow. He is still on a trickle of oxygen.
Eric's white blood cell count was up to 13.7 today. This is high enough and well within the normal range. Eric has been on special drugs called growth factors that have been accelerating his white blood cell production, so now they can take him off those drugs.
Still no signs of graft versus host disease. We aren't entirely sure what it would look like, but the doctors look him over pretty well a few times a day.
Eric next big challenge is healing his intestines. The way they will measure this at first is by how much protein and immunoglobulins he needs. These are both things they can measure in his blood and Eric needs vast amounts of both to keep his levels up. The reason he needs so much is because his intestines are in such bad shape. The protiens and IGs seep out of his blood through his intestines and he ends up wasting them in his stool. It can take many, many weeks for intestines to heal so we are trying not to set our expectations too high.
-dk (via cell phone)
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