He's HOME!

Though his numbers are still pretty low (or high as the case may be), we've learned a lot and are hopeful that he will continue to respond to Velcade and steroids. First the numbers:

hemoglobin: Tues 6.3 6 units of red blood cells later today 9.5 (normal male 13-15)

platelets: (clotting factor) Tues 11,000 Weds 21,000 today 13,000 (they gave him another bag of platelets before we left the hospital, hopefully his own will start kicking in).

createnin (kidney function indicator) Tues 2.6 today 1.9 (Gil is usually about 1.5 which is above normal but ok, these levels are too high)

And now the stories:

Wednesday evening Gil got a yen for ice cream, Babcock Hall orange custard chocolate chip ice cream to be specific. Heck, if you're staying at a UW facility may as well take advantage of UW's ice cream he thought. So he asked the nurse if he could take a walk; she said sure. And he walked from the 6th floor by the VA all the way down to the cafeteria at the far end of the clinic building, had his ice cream, and realized he was too tired to be steady on his feet coming back. He commandeered an empty visitor's wheel chair and slowly walked behind it using the chair to keep steady and made it back. I was a little upset when I heard about it (given that the guy was too weak to walk 10' on Tuesday afternoon!) but the residents who came around this morning were quite impressed by Gil's persistence if not his judgement. They made a case for discharge today and the powers that be agreed. Piper and I visited him in the hospital this morning. She was a hit with the patients and staff and enjoyed playing with the Boggle letters with Gil down in the "room with the tree" visitors room.

There were several good things that came out of this crisis. Perhaps most important, the docs discovered something which might be contributing to the forgetfulness and confusion that has become more and more of a problem of late. One of the meds Gil has been taking at a fairly high level for his restless leg syndrome, when his kidneys are not flushing well, can build up and cause confusion. I'm excited to see what happens to his cognition as we ween him down on that drug.

Another gift of this time has been that our complacency has been shaken. It is easy to coast in denial as all the drugs are keeping the dragons at bay. We both felt the precariousness of his life and a renewed appreciation of each other and "how good it feels to be alive" as my mom often said in her last days.

We have no way of knowing how long this drug or any others they try will keep life going in this bionic man's body, but we both know we will savor each moment more having seen the spector of an out of control myeloma wild fire.