November 22, 2010

It's been a long day, but feel I should update you all on Bonnie's situation. Today she was admitted to the hospital as she woke up this morning with a temperature of 104 degrees. In addition she had GI tract issues (aka: diarrhea)this morning which is something she hasn't dealt with since her 58 day marathon in the hospital at the onset of the leukemia in 2009.

Her temperature stayed between 103 and 104 degrees for most of the day and physically took a toll on Bonnie. Between the combination of prayers mixed with ice packs around her body and heavy duty antibiotics her fever broke this evening and when I left the hospital at 11:00 tonight, her temperature was 98.4 degrees.

She is still having some GI issues, so that remains a concern as this could be Graft vs Host Disease flaring up where we don't want it to. It could also be something related to the fever. Key to this is the GI tract being replenished with new white blood cells, which is something Bonnie currently does not have which is the million dollar question...why did her white blood cell count drop down next to nothing?

The most logical theory from Bonnie's brother is that her body is fighting an infection of some sort and the white blood cells she has have been used up in attacking the infection and because she has a compromised bone marrow system (due to the transplant), her bone marrow can't keep up making new white blood cells to replace the ones fighting the infection.

Unfortunately with all of this, it is requiring another bone marrow biopsy tomorrow. Something Bonnie said she would never have done again. On the plus side of things, as an "inpatient" they can give her all kinds of meds to help her forget the procedure and be happy the doctors came to visit.

You can pray that she won't be anxious leading up to the procedure (we are unsure of the time at this point) and that the pathology might be able to identify what is going on with her system at this point.

Thanks for your continued interest and care.

Steve (and Bonnie)