Teri the general

2/23/10  Tuesday

Teri is improved.  Better sleep – 4 hours straight with the help of medication – makes a big difference.  The counts reveal 100 white cells (close to zero) and 47K platelets after transfusion.  The biggest contributor to lessening her cramping in my mind is the antibiotics and NPO treatment.  Her pain is down from 9-10/10 to 1/10 – dramatic improvement.  Teri decides herself to hold off clear liquids for another 24 hours to get a good low plateau of pain before embarking on food again. 

She developed a non-itchy drug rash that started over the weekend before the antibiotics were started.  It is always something.  Like the coaches say, and it seems appropriate in this roller coaster world of cancer chemotherapy, focus on the one game ahead, in our case, on the one day – today.

Some things never change.  Teri is the family ‘general’ as Dad called her.  Teri also knows best.  For two days, I hadn’t seen my portable flash drive with all my stored presentations, NASPGHAN etc. files at home or in the hospital room and was beginning to get frantic.  She calmly spoke you have misplaced it and you will find it.  And so it came to pass!

Redoing work schedule over the next two weeks with Colin’s instigation so that I can spend the majority of the time with her.  I’m trying to keep the CVS program and procedures going.  Teri is happy with this arrangement and we trying to establish a daily schedule.  She has given me permission to resign as the president of NASPGHAN.