Week Seven

Jody has continued to make progress during the week. She had a private nurse and a physical therapist visiting her through out the week. I kept busy doing the census.

On Monday following Kurt, Shawn and Scot's departure, I became ill. I guess my body finally gave up the battle. I came down with a terrific sore throat and head cold. By Wednesday, after moping around, in and out of bed I finally went to the doctor. My doctor told me I was stressed (I wonder why?) and I just needed to rest and let the cold take it's course. She gave me pain medicine for my throat and sent me home to bed.

When we left the hospital the (hospital) doctors had decided to stop all of Jody's blood disease drugs, as well as all of her chemo drugs. We were told to hold off re-starting the drug treatment regiment until our meeting with Dr. Bumvand (BMT... see "Jody's Treatment") on Friday the 21st of May. The drugs were obviously causing all of her problems.


After the Borchoscopy results came back the doctors determined that Jody had developed an Eosinophilic Pneumonia. (Eosinophils are white blood cells, which are a part of the immune system responsible for fighting infections.) In normal individuals eosinophils make up about 1-6% of white blood cells; Jody's were off the chart. In addition, she had developed a yeast infection in her lungs, which was thought to be brought on by the antibiotics being used to fight her pneumonia. They discovered once they stopped the antibiotics her lungs began to improve. They also found that after stopping the chemo drugs her eosinophils began to drop. Basically, in layman's terms she was being over-medicated.


Our meeting with Dr. Bumvand gave us the hope we were looking for... He gave us the news that his assistant, Pat Wagner had indeed found a perfect match for Jody's bone marrow transplant (see "Third Week"). He wanted proceed, full speed, and set a date to perform the bone marrow transplant. He decided on the third or forth week of July. He instructed his assistant to contact the donor and set the date. Dr. Brumvand wanted to keep Jody to remain off the cancer fighting drugs to avoid any further reactions. He told us he would consult with Dr. Faragher would only react to her disease with medications if needed.

Pat Wagner told us the donor match was a 10 out of 10 and we could not ask for any better match. She also let us know the donor is a young male, and that he is an international donor. We pressed her to tell us more, she could only tell us he was two time zones away. The only other information she could share was that he was gay.

This completes the seventh week.