Thursday, February 21, 2008

Doing Much Better - Still at Stanford

WBC - 12.1 - normal
Hemoglobin - 12.0 - normal
Platelets - 225k - normal
His labs/chemistries look really good!

He is doing much better today/yesterday. He stayed awake all day and was more playful. The craft lady did spin art with the girls. Unfortunately, David has IVs in both arms so he could not hold the paint but enjoyed watching the girls have fun. Child Life brought crafts, stickers, sizzors, and tape so the girls had double fun. It was a good day.

Unfortunately, they want to proceed with the upper and lower GI scope, which is planned for Friday. Two reasons: (1) infections can reside in the intestines which a routine blood test will not detect (2) since he has skin cGVHD which is systemic (meaning, not localized only to the skin but can be a problem throughout his body) his GI track may be affected with GVHD as well. The GI team said they will be able to tell the difference between ulceritis and GVHD because ulcers reside on the surface, while GVHD goes deeper. They will take 8-10 biopsies which are very small (watch the videos, it shows the little arm that take biopsies, it's neat) They are preping him (cleansing his intestines) with a magnesium solution and clear diet. I won't go into how I'm feeling about everything. I'm asking God to be with David and trusting they will not find anything. The next couple of days will be difficult because he will be NPO (nothing by mouth) and they will put him to sleep for the GI scoping procedure. The procedure will happen at 7:30am Friday morning.

For educational purposes, here are two short videos which explain Upper and Lower GI scoping.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh Aimee: My heart goes out to both you and your family. I am thinking of you. Please give David a hug. Deanna