Day + 4

I find myself lying in bed at night with blog posts running through my head. Lucky for all of you, I don't write everything I think about! The time I spend trying to fall asleep after a long day at the hospital is definitely the most difficult. First of all, I'm in bed all alone, without even Hallie or Chance to cheer me up, and second, I have just left Jeff alone in the hospital. (Not that I don't trust the doctors and nurses to take good care of him, but I really like to be double-checking everything they do. I'm probably a most annoying person to have around. The bone marrow coordinator even brings a textbook with him when he comes to talk to us, because I've stumped him a couple of times with questions he wasn't comfortable answering.)

Anyway, Jeff's white count is down to almost nothing. Everyone who enters his room wears a mask, which means I have a mask on all day long. Which, I don't mind too much anymore - it covers up my puffy face! I really hope all of this puffiness goes away soon after the baby is born. Back to Jeff...he's still feeling okay, and his mucousitis hasn't gotten too much worse. He's still eating -- 5 fruit cups, 4 ice cream sandwiches and part of his hospital-prepared supper yesterday. Overall, things are going as expected. The docs say he probably will get some sort of fever over the next week or so, but I'm hoping that we can skip that part this time.

Although the next two weeks are crucial to Jeff's recovery, we still have a long road ahead of us. The 6 to 12 months following a transplant are also important to his long-term recovery, as Jeff's immune system has a long way to go before it can be considered even close to normal. In a year or so, he'll even need to be re-vaccinated for everything from measles to polio. But I guess we just need to take it day by day...