March 25, 2000 -- Day 16 -- Free at last!!
Dave is getting out of the hospital today!! In only 16 days, he's doing well enough to go home (well, to Shannon's House anyway). The night of his transplant, the doctor said around day 20 you usually see the white cell count start to rise. We saw it start at Day 11. Guess Dave really is on the expressway to good health!
The doctors came in to see him this morning, and told him they were proud of him, and happy to have had him in their care, and thrilled to be sending him home today.
I think it has been good for the doctors for Dave to be here. There are other patients here who aren't doing as well, and one gentleman passed away the other night. He was in tough shape, and the transplant was probably his last chance. It's still sad. Dave said the doctors spent some extra time with him the next morning -- probably because they needed a little boost from a patient doing so well.
Before we leave the doctor wants to give Dave a transfusion of platelets and the growth hormone to stimulate his white cells. It's about 11:00, and we'll probably be able to head out of here between 1:00 and 1:30. Fortunately, it's a pretty nice day today. It started out really sunny, but is starting to cloud up some. The wind is out of the south, though, so it's mild outside -- high is supposed to be around 60.
We're going to take the longer way home, so Dave can see the great outdoors (okay, so the great outdoors here consists of buildings and occasional patches of grass), and see how he does riding in the car. We expect we'll head for Vermont later in the week, maybe Saturday.
So that's all for now. We'll keep you posted on his progress.
Talk to you soon!
Allison