Courageous Times

Day +12, it is Christmas Day! Wish you all the peace and joy of Christmas. I had great news today. The white cell count is now up at 0.4 and better still the neutrophil count is now at 0.1 (this is the key count) for the first time in days. My mouth is much better, which means that the healing process has began. The donor  stem cells have started taking over and the engraftment has started. What a great Christmas present! I am in good form today even though it was a very disturbed night.

Lunch is roast turkey and ham followed by Christmas pudding.  A few days ago they asked me if Pat would also like to join me for dinner today. Isn’t that a nice touch? I am looking forward to seeing Pat and the children later on this afternoon. I hear Rohan has a cold, so I guess I’ll see him on Skype instead.

I wasn’t able to drink much yesterday and as a result the Creatinine levels in my blood went up. They had to put me on a saline drip for about 8 hours. Creatinine is filtered out of the blood by the kidneys. If the filtering of the kidney is deficient, creatinine blood levels rise. They tested the blood at midnight and found the level back to normal only to find that my potassium level was high. This was because of the drug Cylosporin. A potassium level that is too high or too low can be serious. I don’t think it was too high (5.6 instead of 5), but they were not taking any chances. At 4 a.m. in the morning, I was woken up to do an ECG! The doctor concluded that there was nothing to worry about and I was able to get back to sleep again until 6 a.m.

I’ll dedicate my blog post today to my four lovely children, Lesley-Ann, Amal, Rohan & Shereen. They have been a great source of support and strength during the last three weeks. The last 6 months were tough on Pat, and several of her friends had commented that she looked ‘worse for wear’ as the stress was beginning to show. These last few weeks, Pat has been looking much better and relaxed. The ‘glow’ has returned. I think this was primarily due to having all four children at home with us.

This prayer is from our school (Loreto College, Foxrock) prayer book and it is my way of thanking God for my four lovely children.

“Give to us God the courage to enter into this moment in time, into this gathering of our family in crisis, into this time of Grace. Let us not blame anyone for this but thank God for the very special times we’ve had together.

Give to us God the courage to enter into the possibilities that lie before us.

Give to us God the courage to enter into your presence, the courage to be carried along by your power reaching out to bless us. Amen”

Happy Christmas! Love Dad