January 23rd - 26th: You Can't Argue with a Happy Cat

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007 08:34 PM, PST

Parent’s Note:

Children's Hospital day four. It’s been a very uneventful day here so I won’t bore you with the details. Keith feels quite good despite the fact that his ANC is equivalent to the cubed root of 125 minus 5. On the brighter side his WBC count increased from zero to .2 (I believe in mathematical terms that’s an infinitely large percentage gain). The nurse that admonished him to 'get to work' yesterday complimented him on his progress today. What a difference a day makes….

We have noticed for some time that Keith’s head has started to repopulate itself with some fuzzy stuff that sort of resembles Kirby’s fur, although not as dense I suppose. What I hadn’t taken careful notice of until recently was his fresh eyebrows and eyelashes. Especially his eyelashes. Oddly, while the hair on top is struggling to make itself visible, his eyelashes are fully regenerated to their former giraffe-like glory. Eyelash follicles are clearly overachievers. Not sure why it has taken me so long to notice how these diminutive hairs around our eyes give presence to a face.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2007 10:02 PM, PST

Parent’s Note:

The chatter amongst the doctors is that Keith is going to be given his walking papers from Children’s Hospital as soon as tomorrow (Thursday) assuming that between now and then he doesn’t have a recurrence of his fever. The cultures have all come back negative so far and the suspicion is that he had some sort of viral episode as opposed to a bacterial infection. In any event he looks good and feels good right now. He did receive another transfusion of platelets last night and hopefully these will last a bit longer than the last batch. A barrage of procedures lie ahead in advance of the BMT and his blood counts need to be up to spec before many of them can proceed.

This unscheduled five-day stay at the posh 5-South Immunocompromised Club has played a bit of havoc with the choreography of all these precursor tests. Apart from the sheer number of tests, we are faced with an additional logistical challenge of some being performed at Oakland and some at Stanford. What triggered the reshuffling was a missed MIBG scan at Stanford earlier this week that couldn’t be rescheduled until the next available slot a couple of weeks from now. It’s somewhat sobering to realize that this machine is in such heavy demand. So it looks like the date of the BMT admission to Lucile Packard will slip back a week to later in February.

Keith did managed to squeeze an echo / pulmonary function test into his busy schedule today. That's one down…

Keith has his face back – at least temporarily.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2007 09:39 PM, PST

shhhhhhhh……

Word on the street has it that he’s busted out again and he’s holed up in Orinda.

Childrenz might need to secure their utility tunnels….

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2007 10:59 PM, PST

“I must say, you can’t argue with a happy cat” Keith

Parent’s Note:

Friday has arrived and Keith feels well, so what’s not to like? This weekend Keith aims to enjoy the 3 F’s of being home - food, friends and fuzzy felines.

Ok, maybe a little computer time as well…