Engraftment underway!

As we've come to expect Abigail is going extremely well. A few minor hiccups along the way with mouth ulcers, gut problems and overall pain, but all of this has so far been manageable if not pleasant. The big news is that in the last couple of days, Abigail has had detectable levels of white blood cells, reaching the glorious peak of 0.3 today. While normal levels are above 5.0, the fact that she has ANY white cells at all indicates that these beasties are from the newly infused bone marrow, in short, engraftment!

This is excellent news; the transplant is beginning to take hold and, as a result, this means that Abi is also starting to come out of the critical period where infections might be devastating. Viruses are another matter, and she'll be re-building her immunity to those for 12 months or more, but at least her white cells are on their way and hopefully neutrophils will follow early next week.

The next challenge is to see how her body and the donor immune system get on, that is the level of graft versus host disease. As the transplant was matched this should hopefully be minimal, but we just won't know for a few more weeks yet. To date it has manifested in the odd rash that dissappears as quickly as it develops and low grade fevers, fingers crossed that this is all that eventuates. In the meantime, she is feeling noticeably better, though we have had to adjust the morphine levels a little to keep her comfortable. Her IV stand now looks ridiculously full as she is/has received IV antibiotics, anti-rejection drugs, anti-nausea drugs, electrolytes such as magnesium as well as platelets and packed (red) blood cells over the last couple of days. Some days it seems the infusions never end, but to date it is all getting the job done. Amazingly, she now has a few patches during the day when she is up for some hiding games, though it can be tough to find a good hiding spot when you are stuck in a bed...