Day Plus One-Hundred-Forty-Five

We are starting a new week. Jody has placed a countdown to Christmas on her marker board. (The nurses write little goals on this same board so Jody can remember things she needs to do; like yesterday they had a goal of sitting up in a chair...) Her little countdown starts at 6 and goes to 1, which is Christmas Eve.

Jody also needs to exercise her lung capacity by sucking in on a breathing apparatus ten times every hour. As she inhales she raises a little diaphragm, which measure the amount of force or suction. Jody is fanatic about doing her exercises. Most of us take short breaths in and out all the time... Jody has to learn to inhale deeply and purse her lips when exhaling to strengthen her lung capacity and increase circulation. We all need to consciously do this and unless we are purposely told to deep breathe this way, many of us do not. Yoga teaches breathing techniques like this to improve our health. For Jody it is critical that she improves her lung capacity after losing 10-15% of her left lung.

Her CBC continues to improve, everything is back up including her HCT, White Blood Cells and Platelets. This tells the doctors her graft is strong and continues to gain in strength. In addition, Jody has not had any GVHD attacks during this episode, which also bodes well for her recovery.

I wanted to catch up on some of my book keeping before going to the hospital. I spoke to Jody a couple of times and she sounds a lot better over the phone. They are taking some x-rays to see how she is healing inside and determine if they can remove the tubes from her chest. We should know this afternoon.

I will write more latter....

The results came back too late for the doctors to do anything, so we are hopeful for tomorrow. Jody is resting so I decided to go home...