Hello Again....

Sorry about the long dry spell, again. Trying to get back in the swing of Home and I also need to finish getting the RV squared away with putting stuff away and readying it for the really cold weather to come.

As for Florence, she is doing fine according to the Doc’s. She is still very tired and concerns about relapsing are still on her mind. I continue to hound her to drink more fluids and eat without too much success. Although, she has managed to perfected a rather intimidating scowl.

Today she got up and exercised a bit. Later she plans to watch the Civil War game. Her White blood counts had been falling so Dr. Neville (her local Hematology Doc) had me dose her with Neupogen again. That got her counts back up on the 30^th, so now we watch to see if they stay up. (Labs are below)

She is now down to 9 pills a day, 6 in the morning and 3 at night. Guess what a one-month supply of Vfend goes for????? Vfend is her anti-fungal but she also takes other anti’s until her immune system gets to a level to provide her own protection. (Thank goodness for insurance coverage..... Answer later)

This whole rebuilding of her immune system will continue for some months. As planned, the last chemo decimated her bone marrow leaving her unable to manufacture blood cells. This leaves it up to the transplanted marrow stem cells to replenish all of Florence’s bone marrow as well as manufacturing red and white cells and keeping those cell counts up for daily use. This is why the Medical Teams refers to her immune system as being immature, since it is just starting out all over again. Florence even gets to look forward to getting all her vaccinations again after DAY +365.

Needless to say, she can currently catch all those illnesses so she is being careful not to become exposed. Even folks that have been vaccinated recently can be a concern since some of the vaccines, being live, are contagious to folks like Florence. Many of those vaccines require 6 weeks to be considered non-contagious.

Florence’s cell counts continue to be up and down…. Recent counts are:

For 11/28 … and now… 11/30

White Cells 1900 ...now.... 3700 (4500 - 11000)


Neutrophil 0.67 ...now.... 2.1 (1.8 – 7.7)


Red Cells 3.12 ...now.... 2.98 (4 - 5.2)


Platelets 48 ...now.... 46 (150 - 400)

and by the way, the Vfend is $2200. No.. I didn't miss a decimal point..... (with one it is $2200.00) How do folks do this without insurance.... something is wrong here....

Thanks for all the good wishes and prayers,

Larry