Day +10

Since the day of Phoebe's transplant, when she gave everyone a scare with her fevers, drop in oxygen levels and low and then elevated heart rate, her room on the bmt unit has been quiet.  Almost too quiet.  The doctors come in and comment on her incredible resilience, how good she looks, how well she is doing, how she has no complications.  Good, good, good.  We should know by now however, that life with Phoebe is never without action.  Yesterday afternoon, she spiked a fever that eventually climbed to 40.2 overnight.  It came down with tylenol, but has reappeared every 6 hours since then.  The doctors suspect it is related to engraftment.  She has no signs of recovering cells in her peripheral blood, but they think that her body is starting the process of engraftment and reacting to that.  Once again, her immune system is being fired up, and consequently, so is her little body.  They expect to see an increase in her ANC and white cell count over the next few days. 

To be on the safe side, they have started Phoebe on antibiotic number 4.  Just in case there is an infection raging within her they want to make sure that it doesn't get out of control.  Apart from a rash (which can be related to engraftment), she does look good, so they think it unlikely that she has an infection that would produce such high fevers.  Plus, all of her blood cultures have come back negative.  Everyone, including Jon and I, seem to be hoping for and voting for engraftment.  Please let this be engraftment. 

I feel anxious and worried, mainly because very much of this is unknown.  Every symptom that Phoebe has has two or more possible scenarios.  One is good, and the other terrible.  Instead of focusing on the possibility of terrible, I choose to focus on Phoebe.  Yesterday, not only did she start to eat - sampling, chewing AND swallowing a cookie, some cheerios and her favourite ketchup flavoured fries, she said ball, block, bye, more, and something that very closely resembled cuddle. More and cuddle were said together - more cuddle. She is amazing and so is her ability to make it through this. 

Before long we will be back to the wonderfully quiet days.