Discharged Again

Jeff was once again discharged from the hospital today. The skin biopsy that was performed on a chunk of Jeff's rash showed that it's consistent with GVH, so we got the official diagnosis today - Grade 3 Acute Graph vs. Host Disease. As I've mentioned before, this is good news. For now, the GVH is being treated with lots of prednisone and tacrolimus. Because of the dose of steroids he is receiving, his blood sugars are all out of whack, so now we're dealing with steroid-induced diabetes. This means checking blood sugars four times a day and giving insulin as needed. This should be a temporary problem that goes away as he is weaned off of the prednisone.

The next step will be Day Hospital for infusion support. Jeff's white count is up to 1.1, which means that he is no longer neutropenic, but still not fully recovered. After his white count stabilizes, his red blood and platelets should also rebound.

We both got a little frustrated today. Once again, it took forever to get discharged from the hospital. Yes, six hours feels like forever when you're waiting to leave that god-forsaken place. I try to stay upbeat as much as possible, but today, I ended up making an already cranky Jeff a little crankier. I just got so mad when we were still at the hospital at 3 pm.

Although the rash is starting to ease up, Jeff is still itchy and uncomfortable. The steroids are causing his face to look and feel puffy, and when you combine all of this with the incredibly dry skin caused by the chemo, you get a not-so-happy Jeffy. The GVH is also causing his eyes to feel very dry.

The science involved in the treatment of leukemia (and cancer in general) is still very imperfect. The fact is, a Donor Lymphocyte Infusion, the best treatment for relapse after transplant, only has about a 50% chance of working. I've mentioned that Dr. Claxton thinks that Jeff will recover in remission, but there is still the very real possibility that he will eventually relapse. The hardest part of all of this is knowing that no matter how much hell we go through now, we might have to do it all over again, and that with each relapse, the odds of success drastically decrease.

I'm not being pessimistic right now. The fact that Jeff got some GVH is a very good thing, but sometimes, I give my blog readers the facts, without really being thorough. I guess I'm just elaborating a bit more tonight.