Lucas had been looking really pale before last Friday as well as fatigued. The look reminded me of the week before our initial diagnosis and I was worried about the big R word. His hemoglobin last Friday was 6.4, a drop of 3 from 11 days ago. Platelets dropped from 240 to 140. WBC stays high. The big drop of hemoglobin took us by surprise since it had been a while since his heavy artillery phase and it had been stable for almost 3 weeks. I asked the nurse practitioner what's the cause. She consulted the most experienced NP (served many years, longer than any doctors there right now). They think it's still a residual effect from the intensive chemo and his bone marrow is tired and confused. They ordered 1.5 times the amount they would usually give Lucas for blood transfusion. This is his 15th blood transfusion and he has also had 8 platelets transfusions. Most kids undergoing the same treatment only get a handful of transfusions. Lucas has got a lot more and we worry about the fact that his bone marrow is not producing as much as it should. We also worry about the iron overload and possible antibodies associated with large amounts of transfusion.
We will go back tomorrow to get another CBC to make sure it won't keep dropping. Fingers crossed!
No comments:
Post a Comment