The Weight - Day 5 & 6

Everything is difficult, yet okay. Day 5 & 6 refers to the count of days since the marrow transplant, the day of getting it being "day zero". She's actually been in the hospital for 18 days so far. Rosina is riding it our right now, confined to her room with a white blood cell count of 0.01 (aka 0). The nasty mouth and throat thing is called mucositis and is common with chemo, more common with chemo and radiation, and very common with people who are having bone marrow transplant treatment. She is at "stage 4" which is qualified by the fact that you cannot swallow. At all. You cannot swallow a sip of water. Talking can be quite difficult. The whole thing lasts about ten days and she has about five more to go. It's obviously unpleasant, although it was worse a few days ago and the doctor says that her mouth looks pretty good, considering. Someone comes by every eight hours to do a mouth treatment which consists of swishing a bunch of medicines and then spraying some stuff in there. She still has the morphine drip, which is the normal pain medication for this, and it has evened things out for her, although it certainly makes you less than alert. Several of us are taking turns spending the night in her room mainly because she can fall alseep at any time, including when she's going to the bathroom. Extra double plus thanks to Sandra and Ann for taking on that duty.

A couple of nights ago at 3am she had a strong pain in her chest and they did an EKG and a chest x-ray there in the room, but it all turned out normal. It's hard to get more than a couple hours sleep at any one time, though. I was not feeling well yesterday morning and have not been out in the last two days; you have to be very cautious.

Nina and I went to see Caetano Veloso, a Brazilian singer, last night, and we called Rosina four times so she could hear the music over the phone. She sang along. All in all, she is hanging tough, forging ahead, and gaining ground in her road trip. Thanks all, for the support.
xo
ph