Blue Monday

Yum yum. Kristi orders extra bacon with breakfast for me. I finally got a (free) muffin this morning, for the first time in 6 days. One must be quick in the morning. In addition to a tasty English Muffin with strawberry jam, Kristi will also be getting two units of fresh squeezed A- (no-doubt thanks to Camile Hart). Her hematocrit has dropped to 21. She is now completely off any hydrating drips, including sodium bicarbonate and saline. They also gave her another shot of diuretics. Her net fluid loss yesterday was only about a liter.

Every day around 9:30, the doctors make their rounds. It's quite a herd, the room fills with "white coats". I suppose it's a blessing that they are just in and out. This means that things are going precisely to plan. We pretty much just get a reiteration of what the last attending told us. Her white blood cell counts are plummeting, and so are her red blood cells. Thus, she needs to start transfusions. She can be taken off the hydrating drips for a while since the bulk of white blood cells that are going to die have already. One of the prime concerns during her time here has been a build up of toxins from dying cells. She has taken drugs twice a day to deal with this, plus a constant drip of sodium bicarbonate (to manage blood pH). The primary toxin is uric acid, which builds up in the joints causing the Gout.