Day 5 And Still Alive!

This was Torger's slogan for Sunday ("Day 5 and still alive!"). Day 5 is typically when transplant patients really start to feel sick, and that seems to be true for Torger. His energy levels really crashed, and he had to get a platelet transfusion. Platelets--the part of your blood that helps your body heal cuts and prevent bruises--are the first things to go post-transplant, and the last to come back. (Shout out to our sister and bro-in-law, Marcy and Mark, who are long-time platelet donors. These are a precious commodity...there was one day this summer when the hospital actually ran out. If you can, donate today!)

Torger's dad, Jon Hougen, has been doing some reading and provided a nice, succinct summary of what is happening in Torger's body right now. This is pretty much as the doctors have explained it to us: "The transplanted (healthy and aggressive) white blood cells attack and kill all of Torger's remaining (few and weakened) white blood cells, thus ridding his body of every last cancerous blood cell with an efficiency that chemo, etc. can't possibly match. Graft versus host disease is when the transplanted white blood cells go on to attack some of the other kinds of cells in Torger's body, thus causing great damage to the host (Torger)." Right now, we're still in the "graft vs. leukemia" stage, where the donor's cells are wiping out Torger's blood so they can engraft and fill his system up with new, healthy blood. But graft vs. host disease will be a big worry for us over the next several months.