Dad's Home!

Hi All. Sam again.

It's Day +23 and Graham was discharged from the hospital this evening.

Yay!

The kids arrived on Wednesday with my Mum and they were sooo excited to have Dad home tonight. Mum said that every time they heard the elevator start up outside the apartment door, they kept saying "It's them, it's them!"

And eventually it was us (after we collected the cache of drugs from the Pharmacy that he needs to take each day) and Dad was swamped in hugs and kisses.

Graham is still feeling nauseous and tired but is much improved and most importantly he is officially engrafted with an Absolute Neutrophil Count of 3,200! You may remember me saying that he needed to reach 500 to be considered engrafted. Well he reached that milestone a few days ago and is now well within normal limits.

So the worst is over and now he just has to regain his strength while being very careful for the next 12 months.

He has lost all the immunity he gathered over his lifetime and as a result is very susceptible to bugs that would have not been a problem in his pre-transplant life. He can't be anywhere there is a crowd of people he doesn't know as they may be carrying germs that could at best really set back his recovery if he was to come in contact with them.

In 12 months' time he will then get all his childhood immunisation shots again. He can't get them before then as his fledgling immune system can't cope with the live vaccines until it has this amount of time to establish itself.

I hope he will be back with you soon but wanted to update you on this momentous occassion. Jack has requested pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning as a celebration! I told him that was a wonderful idea.