Saturday,

Today is Day +8 following Bonnie’s transplant. A week and a day have passed and thus far she is doing very well in the eyes of the BMT team of doctors and nurses. We are starting to see signs of the pending storm that is approaching; more fatigue, headaches and some mild irritation beginning in her mouth.

Being on a floor where all the patients are in some stage of the BMT process, you quickly begin to gauge and benchmark yourself to the status of the others. We know who is new, waiting for their transplant day, and more importantly know who has already had their transplant and when it occurred. There are two patients and their families we have gotten to know fairly well and have regular conversations with them. Both of them had their transplants two days prior to Bonnie’s so we can see where they are at condition wise to ascertain in some aspects how Bonnie is faring.

Yesterday (Friday) Bonnie’s white blood cell (WBC) count actually went up a little (artificially) from 1.1 (1100) on Thursday to 1.6, but have fallen to .7 (700) today. Her hemoglobin has dropped to 8.8 and when it falls below 8.0 will require red blood cells transfused. Her platelets have dropped to 22 (normal is 100 to 150). All of these lowering numbers are expected and with it come the side effects. They started Neupogen injections on Thursday to start the stimulation process of the new stem cells that are residing in the bone marrow cavity.

I (Steve) have been asked a few times about the chemo killing off Bonnie’s WBC without affecting the new stem cells, so those of you who are interested in my best attempt at a common layman explanation, feel free to read on. Say you have a yard full of weeds that you want to kill and replace with new grass. You apply weed killer to your entire yard to poison and kill the weeds. After waiting a few days for the weed killer to be absorbed by the weeds, you overseed your lawn with new grass seed. The weeds continue to die out and overtime they have been eliminated. At the same time the new grass seed germinates, takes root and begins to grow. Likewise, Bonnie’s WBC are like the weeds and the donor’s stem cells are like the new grass seed. I’m sure a BMT specialist would cringe at the explanation and inform me that I’ve taken too much liberty in simplifying something so complex.

We continue to trust God and lay all of this at His feet asking Him to use us in His plans to glorify Himself through all of this, no matter the outcome. Please continue to pray that Bonnie will persevere and have endurance throughout this stage of the process. Thank you all for your faithfulness in keeping us in your prayers. We have been truly blessed by all of you.

Steve & Bonnie