Monday, February 09, 2004
Day + 117 The last few days have been a little more medically interesting than the last few weeks. It began last Thursday when Dr. Wolf called me. When he called my initial reaction and question was "What are you calling me for?" as he usually only calls when it is important such as an indication of relapse. To say the least I had a little mini-heart attack until he told me that John has CMV again. CMV is Cytomegalovirus. Most adults have the virus, but it is dormant in our systems. When your immune system is attacked or suppressed the virus often becomes active again and can cause many problems. One is retinitis when the patient can become blind very quickly. I know a woman who had a kidney transplant and it happened to her. Also it can cause hepatitis like symptoms and pneumonia. I am just glad it is not some crazy renegade leukemia cell that popped up and CMV can be handled by increasing John's anti-viral. I looked up CMV on google and found this website: http://www.astdhpphe.org/infect/cytomegalo.html to go to for more information. They key is not to worry.
John is tired, but the other interesting thing is John's blood pressure is down quite a bit the last 10 days. Today at the cancer center his blood pressure was 85 over 63. That is really too low. Luckily John had an appointment with Dr. Tsang (the cardiologist) and they decided it could be the virus or could be his heart has adjusted to medicine and so they cut one of the cardiac medications in half. His echocaridogram was fine, but there was a comment about his left ventricle being severely enlarged which Dr. Tsang wants to see for himself. He feels it may the the position John was in when they measure because his ejection of blood is in the low normal range. Dr. Tsang will call me tomorrow and reassure us that it is not at all a problem.
Today besides a long discussion about CMV his blood looked okay, not great. Dr. Wolf thinks it is because the virus is active. John's WBC's were down again, and his platelets slipped to 150 today. His red cells however are up and we get to discontinue the weekly epogen shots for a while. John has been lucky so far, a lot of steps forward with very few steps back. This doesn't even seem like a big deal, so I can say this week things kind of stayed even, if that makes sense.
John will not have an appointment for 10 days because of the Presidents day holiday. I am actually going to leave him in charge of the cats for the weekend and spend a nice weekend with Bowman at San Simeon touring Hearst Castle. John has promised no Risky Business type parties.
John is tired, but the other interesting thing is John's blood pressure is down quite a bit the last 10 days. Today at the cancer center his blood pressure was 85 over 63. That is really too low. Luckily John had an appointment with Dr. Tsang (the cardiologist) and they decided it could be the virus or could be his heart has adjusted to medicine and so they cut one of the cardiac medications in half. His echocaridogram was fine, but there was a comment about his left ventricle being severely enlarged which Dr. Tsang wants to see for himself. He feels it may the the position John was in when they measure because his ejection of blood is in the low normal range. Dr. Tsang will call me tomorrow and reassure us that it is not at all a problem.
Today besides a long discussion about CMV his blood looked okay, not great. Dr. Wolf thinks it is because the virus is active. John's WBC's were down again, and his platelets slipped to 150 today. His red cells however are up and we get to discontinue the weekly epogen shots for a while. John has been lucky so far, a lot of steps forward with very few steps back. This doesn't even seem like a big deal, so I can say this week things kind of stayed even, if that makes sense.
John will not have an appointment for 10 days because of the Presidents day holiday. I am actually going to leave him in charge of the cats for the weekend and spend a nice weekend with Bowman at San Simeon touring Hearst Castle. John has promised no Risky Business type parties.
