Gosh, we had hoped today would be oh so much better but alas it was another rough day for Ray. Not nearly as scary as a couple of days ago when we were worried about his heart, kidneys & liver but he had a very uncomfortable day today.
The horrible swelling in his hands from all the fluid retention in his body had seemed to subside some yesterday & wasn't as painful. But dang if it didn't get worse today! He is so bloated everywhere now, including his legs & stomach. The hands are really bad & causing him the most pain. Large blisters are forming & near ready to burst it seems. The doctors hesitate to give him diuretics to relieve it because of the possible damage it can cause to his kidneys. Keep in mind that the stage he's at in this transplant process puts his liver & kidneys at some risk of damage so they hesitate to compromise them any further. What to do.... what to do?
They tell us that he needs to try hard to take in more foods high in protein to help the situation & he truly is trying but it's so hard for him to eat right now. The appetite is gone. Today he did manage to get down a protein enriched milk shake, some yogurt & cottage cheese. But not a whole lot of anything else. With so little food intake he should be losing weight big time, but instead he is gaining & that is not good.
When the doctor looked at his throat this morning, she said it still looks very raw. All those horrible sores are trying to break lose & come out which makes his mouth & esophagus very tender. We won't talk about some of the other personal issues he's having but it's not fun either.
Here's a little more information that I thought I'd share in case some reading this don't understand. As I explained to my grandson today, all the problems Ray is having right now is due to the intense chemo he had to have prior to receiving the donor's stem cells. But the chemo was necessary to kill off all of Ray's bad & good cells so that when he received the donor's cells, Ray's wouldn't recognize them as alien cells that didn't belong & try to attack them. Yes, the chemo is very hard on a person but necessary. Make sense?
On a positive note, the white blood cell count came up even more today which means his immune system is getting better! It also indicates that the donor's good stem cells are engraphting & beginning to take charge. Now for them to get busy & nip these problems in the bud!
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