Days 7, 8 and 9.

A lot of you have been asking about mom, so until she is out of the hospital I will try and update more frequently since I know many of you are worried and sending up lots and lots of prayers. These updates will be short and sweet. 

Day 7. Monday

Mom is still in the hospital. She finally had her scan and it confirmed what the infectious disease specialist had thought... pneumonia. The good news is that we have confirmed the source of the infection and can continue fighting it while removing her from unnecessary drugs. Due to swelling from the chemo/radiation, they were not able to determine any update on the status of her cancer/tumor from the scan. She is still scheduled for THAT scan on Dec. 18. 

The other good news is that after a extremely dramatic and heartfelt Facetime Session (in which I legit bawled my eyes out) mom has finally decided that, when she is strong enough, she will move forward with the esophagectomy surgery. Obviously there is a lot that needs to happen before that, so there is no timeline on when this will be, but she is going to KEEP fighting. 🙏 

Day 8. Tuesday

She was woken up by a nurse at 8:00 a.m. with a low-grade 100.2 fever, which was too low too warrant any fever meds, which is great. Other than that, mom slept almost the entire day and didn't have much news to share other than that she was told she will need to "eat" more high calorie foods (duh). 

Day 9. Wednesday

When she got up this morning she texted me that her absolute neutrophils went from 900 to 1100, which is amazing because that means she is no longer on the neutropenic list. Anything over 1000 is good, so she is better than good. Unfortunately her platelets were still low at 29 (our goal is still 50 minimum). And she woke up with a low temp of 99.2 which was also great news. She was in good spirits when we spoke and was craving a fruit smoothie (packed with protein boosts), which Uncle Tom so generously delivered. 

Later that afternoon we learned that her doctor's were scheduling her for a bronchoscopy at 2:00 p.m. today. Because she is still spiking fevers (she went back up to 100.2) they are concerned why her medication isn't working and wanted to get a better look at her throat, lungs and esophagus and take some biopsies/tissue samples to identify if there are other sources of infection that are preventing her from getting better. Basically, we want more answers. It is a surgical procedure which requires sedation, and while there is always some risk, it's a fairly common procedure. 

However, you all know mom and nothing is common with her. While initially scheduled for 2 p.m., they opted to push it back until 4:00 so they could do platelet transfusions to prevent her from excessive bleeding (thanks to her extremely low 29 count). I received word from her at 3:45 CST that it was now pushed back to 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, no word as of why, and that she was going back to her nap. More to come tomorrow as we learn the results of her procedure. 

xo
Maggie