Day 7 and Didn't Go To Heaven

That was the motto for Tuesday ("Day 7-Didn't Go to Heaven"), and it seems to have worked. Despite throwing up in the morning and continued digestion problems, Torger had a better day than the one before. We're thinking that the methatrexate he gets on Days 1, 3, 6, and 11 contributed to him getting really sick on Monday, and the problems he's having with his sinuses and digestion are just part of going through the transplant process. But fortunately, he's now finished three of the four doses of methatrexate, and getting all four doses in is very important for his recovery. (If a patient gets too sick, with mouth sores etc., they have to stop the doses, which then can make the person more vulnerable to graft versus host disease later on.) I was able to get him to eat a little more, thanks to my sisters' reminders that they give their kids bananas when their stomachs are upset. I got some bananas, washed them with hospital soap and peeled them--Torger isn't allowed to touch the peels--and he ate two of them! He was also able to keep down two pieces of Wonder Bread, which I don't think he's had since he was a toddler. The infectious disease specialist came by in the afternoon to check out the lesion on Torger's tongue, and she thought his constant mouth-rinsing was really helping. Dr. Tse also popped in, and he said Torger was doing much better than he'd expected--which was a fantastic thing to hear, given his poor prognosis before the transplant. By the evening, Torger was feeling a lot better. His bones are aching from the marrow being killed off and replaced, but a little Tylenol helped with that. So all in all, not a bad day...and probably the first time I've felt really, wholeheartedly that he was going to make it through this.