Day +77-Day +90

We survived the holidays!  We were blessed to have our kids here and they were a tremendous help.  They put up our outside lights and then took them down along with our artificial tree (still no plant material allowed in the house).  Everything got packed away and put in its place.  I emphasize this because normally Steven and I do this task.  The kids really stepped it up and helped with cooking meals and taking Steven to his COH appointments.  A few things went by the wayside but nothing catastrophic.  It's interesting what becomes important when going through a major health challenge.
We also got away with only coming to clinic once during Christmas week and once during New Years week.  We were hoping that trend would stay but not the case....not yet anyway.

Both Tuesdays Steven got a unit of blood, designated donor blood from the blood drive!!  They were both O+.  He is still typing as B+ but either he has weird antibodies or the B+/B- units have antibodies.  Either way we are eternally grateful to everyone who has donated for Steven.

It's a zoo today, the Tuesday after New Years and it's raining (actual rain).  Steven's HGB is 8.1, not quite low enough for a unit of blood.  We will be back on Friday because he will need a unit of blood.  We are getting close to our +100 Day benchmark and asked the nurse practitioner what can we look forward to.  Everything is prefaced with, "well we will have to ask Dr. Nathwani.....".  I get this.  Healthcare isn't going to promise you the world and then have to back off of those promises.  They would rather give you a tidbit and build on that.  Honestly, we know things will loosen up at some point.  We have gotten this far and followed the rules, we aren't going to blow it now.

We did have one change in medication.  Steven's RBCs are still nonexistent so they have decreased one of the anti-rejection medications, Tacrolimus.  Instead of 3 tablets twice a day, he is taking 3 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon.  It doesn't seem major considering he is still on 15 medications but they are hoping this will give the donor RBC's a chance to increase.  We are pretty early in the BMT process so they don't want to decrease the anti-rejection meds too soon or too fast.