Monday, Jan. 4 - Transplant Day. I got to the hospital shortly before noon and Roy was receiving his transplant. It was two small bags, each taking 30 minutes and he was on the second bag when I got there. The nurse took his vitals every 15 minutes to make sure he was handling everything okay and he was. The only thing was that his blood pressure went up a little bit but the nurse said that was okay and if it got too high they could give him some medicine to bring it down but they didn't have to do that as it didn't get that high. They had given him quite a bit of Benadryl before they started and after the transplant he took about an hour nap; woke up for a little bit and about an hour later he took another hour nap. The nurse told him he needed to be up a little bit to work the Benadryl out of his system so we walked the halls and down to the 1st floor to the gift shop to get some hard candy. He ended up getting some Life Savers as the bag of hard candy was too expensive so I'll go to the store in the morning and get some for him before I go to the hospital. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast so before I left I told him he needed to order some soup or something and when I left he was dialing the food service. The nice thing at MDA is that you can order up until 10p.m. and at any time and the folks that bring it up are dressed like fancy food restaurant folk - white shirts and black vest and pants.

The nurse said 7-10 days after chemo started his counts would go to nothing and that is what they want. She said his white count will .0 or .01 but she didn't say what his hemoglobin or platlet could would be but he will have to have transfusions and when the white count goes that way, that is when he could get really sick and have problems, so anytime from Wednesday- Saturday he could start having low counts. She said they like for the WBC to go down slowly and that makes mouth sores less severe but there isn't anything they can do to control that - it is all according to the individual - some have counts that drop fast and others slowly.