Mucositis

   

            Yesterday, for the first time, David didn’t walk into the Cox clinic at MGH from Blossom St. This would involve a flight of stairs and perhaps 100 feet of walking. Instead I drove  to the Fruit St., garage, parked, and wheeled him to Cox. (Thank you to Deb Butler for the wheelchair loan. I keep it in the trunk of my car.) He didn’t carry his computer with him, just the most recent Economist.

David has weakened. He has not eaten any solid food for several days, and only a few yogurts before that. He’s drinking hot water and honey, and warm milk. He has had a sore throat since Wednesday, ‘6-8’ on a scale of 1-10. His cough seems a little better, but he coughs at least every ten minutes.

            Yesterday, ‘T’, who has been his nurse for the past couple of weeks, started platelets right away. (Her name is Theresa, but she grew up with brothers and her father worked for the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, T for short), so ‘T’ was a natural nickname.)

The strep test came back negative. This was expected, since he’s on antibiotics. They are culturing for a viral infection and he’s on fluconazole, an antifungal. He might have thrush, a Candida (‘yeast’) infection which I recall hearing about when I had newborns. It’s most common in babies and toddlers, elderly people, and people with compromised immune systems. This WebMD article is informative.

Dr. Fathi looked in David’s throat and said it was severe mucositis: inflammation of the mucous membranes. He thinks the leukemia is causing the breakdown. Leukemia can also get into the cells, but he doesn’t think that is happening just now.

            Plateltets are 4: they haven’t risen above 4 for a week, even though he’s had 2 platelet infusions during that time. His hemocrit is 23.0, up from 21.9 on Friday, when he received red blood cells. White blood cell count is 21.20, slightly up from last Friday’s count of 17.11, but at least it isn’t rising quickly at the moment.