Blood Cultures

Van is doing well considering the fact that his blood counts are dropping in half every other day because of the Chemo. They are taking us one day at a time to make sure that his levels don’t fall too far. Platelets are responsible for clotting in the blood and since they have dropped so far, we have to go back tomorrow and we will probably have to receive more. I LOVE driving back and forth to Salt Lake every day– NOT! I don’t know how commuters that work in Salt Lake do it? But one positive thing is, we get a long talk date every day (in the car).


When we told the Doctor today that Van has been experiencing cold sweats and chills, he decided we needed to do a blood culture. I had no idea what a blood culture was until today.  I have included pictures. Van’s central line has three ports and one of these ports might be harboring infection, so they have to take blood out of each one. These bottles have chemicals in them to begin with and then add 10 cc's or so of blood to each one. They will be tested and results will be back in 24 hours.

They started his Neupogin shots again (it speeds up the white blood cell production). Megan, our 16 year old daughter, is giving him the shots every day because she wants to be a nurse. I (Wendy) would rather not give the shots if I don’t HAVE to. Last time we started these shots, on about day four, he started with horrible bone pain. So the Doctors have been researching and found a few patients that took Clariton and felt it helped. So they started him on it for the last few days to see if there is any truth to it. I LOVE how the Doctors are always researching and trying new things.