D+26: Two steps forward, one step back

Ryan's WBC is back down to .2 today. We knew there would be some fluctuation in his count, but this hiccup may be attributable to something else. Ryan woke up with a slight fever this morning and his other counts (platelets, red blood cells) were down as well. Dr. Graham came in a bit early to see what was up. He thought that an infection may be responsible for the fever and the depressed count (Ryan's new white blood cells were enlisted to fight the infection). He ordered a chest X-ray, some blood cultures, and Tylenol to treat Ryan's fever. More anxious waiting ... The X-ray and blood work came back normal. Ryan's fever is gone. Hopefully, we dodged a bullet with this one.

Dr. Graham seems quite anxious to get Ryan off of the morphine. Of course, Cheryl and I were just getting used to the idea of having him on it all the time, so we have some mixed feelings on the matter. On the one hand, we definitely want Ryan to be more awake and alert. On the other, we don't want him to be alert just to feel a bunch of pain all the time. Anyway, the initial results of lowering the morphine are promising. Ryan is more alert, but he is not in significant discomfort (easy for me to say). He laughed at me like four times this afternoon, which really made me feel good. The only sad part is that the harder he laughs, the more it hurts his chest/throat. So the laughter starts with a smile and ends with a cry. Poor boy. There is a bright side to the crying - he manages to hack up a bunch of mucus from his airway.

I want to give a shout out to my cousin, Kathleen. Forever the champion of good causes, she traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles last week by bike ! All in the name of charity. Well done.