T+21: Mickey Escapes Again

We're all struggling with one sort of cabin fever or another. This afternoon even Mickey made another attempt to escape, again concealing himself in Kay's dirty bedding. Marion, now familiar with the intimate workings of the laundry system, managed to track him down quite quickly. He had only managed to get as far as the department's laundry bin and Marion only had to look through three sacks of dirty laundry to find him. He got a good telling off from Kay followed by a big cuddle when he was returned. He is now tied securely to Kay's bed to prevent any further escape attempts and the staff have been strictly warned to keep a good look out for him.

Like the weather outside, the dark cloud here is still hanging around, getting bigger even. Kay is still feeling very nauseous and has been sick a number of times. She drinks & eats hardly anything and so is on more or less a constant NG feed. Yesterday she managed to throw up her NG tube as well and so the day was officially declared a "rotdag", a bad day, and she was given another bead for her Tough Kid Necklace (Kanjer Ketting). (I've not mentiond this before, I'll try to remember to write about it in the coming days).

Her blood results today were also a little disappointing, see below:

The total white cell count has remained the same all week, 0.4. However, a component of the overall white cell count, neutrocyte count has risen to 0.26. This is generally seen as a good thing and indicates that her system is still moving forward, albeit slowly.

Her platelet count has fallen from a high of 44 on Monday to 19 today. This triggered another platelet transfusion. Her red count count has remained stable at 4.9, just above the transfusion threshold. Again this is seen as a good thing. Overall she remains in an ongoing fragile state but, apart from the sickness, has no other complicating factors - YET.

She is now a lot weaker than a two weeks ago when she was making dance videos and even since last weekend when we played Room Hockey. She now barely gets out of bed and I can't imagine her running round the room again for quite a while yet.

The conversations about going home continue however. Marion has had a detailed conversation with the transplant coordinator today about "being at home, do's and dont's". She is now home for the weekend to prepare the house for Kay's eventual return. Lucky me, I get the whole weekend in the hospital so that I can have the joy of going to work on Monday. Somehow there's something wrong with this picture but I'm too tired to work it out. I have a feeling that Marion has cleverly managed to categorize "going to work" as being the same as a "free day". Hmmmm.....