Platelet Infusion Day 8 and 9

Sorry I missed yesterdays post, but this one is coming earlier in the day. Stevan had a pretty good day yesterday. He had some trouble sleeping on Wednesday night, the first since he's been here at the hospital. When Dr. Holter came in yesterday, she said that she give him Ambien (5mg) last night to help him sleep. Well... it didn't work. He took it at 9pm and at midnight he was still wide awake. This morning Dr. Holter told him she would give him something else tonight that might work better.

Yesterday they decided to flush out one of his ports on his central line. They had been having trouble drawing blood from it. Later yesterday afternoon it seemed to be leaking blood from the skin, pooling under the sterile clear bandage over where his line was placed. Yesterday while he was fitfully sleeping off and on, he was constantly playing with his IV lines and pulling on it. We thought maybe this was the cause of this. They came in and change it around 10:30 PM.

Here is his numbers from the last two days.
                       5/31           6/1
White Cells      0.1             .2
Red Cells         3.18         3.04
Hemoglobin    9.6           9.4
Platelets           21             8
Since his platelets dropped below 10, he received a bag of platelets this morning. They decided that the low platelets was the reason his bandage was leaking blood. When there is low platelets, it doesn't allow his blood to clot properly. The nurse came back in later this morning to tell us that his platelets went up to 32. She said that its normal for patients to receive a bag of platelets every other day or so. If he begins to run a fever, over 100 it will "burn up" his platelets, dropping his count again. For the third morning in a row he received potassium this morning as well.

Stevan's line bandage was changed yet again around noon for the third time in three days. Since last night it had leaked more blood around the line under the bandage. So now it is very tender from the nurses pulling the tape off of his chest. Hopefully he wont need it changed again until next Wednesday, the day they always change central line bandages.

Dr. Holter told us this morning she could see us coming home in the middle of next week, if all continues to go well. The only problems Stevan is having is being able to sleep. We hope the new medicine he gets tonight will do the trick. Thank you for following us on this journey. We appreciate your thoughts and prayers.