Day +13: Is That a Light There at the End of the Tunnel?

I arrived back at the hospital after my lunch time excursion and rounding the corner into Sile's hallway I was taken aback by an extremely welcome sight:  Sile sitting in a chair out in the hallway.  The afternoon physical therapist had come and taken her out walking in the halls.  Since Sile was unable to even participate in PT yesterday this was a rather surprising development!  They covered 500 feet with three rest stops - pretty good for a first outing, according to the PT.  The goal is to get Sile to walk 1800 feet, the Medicare-approved standard for safety navigating a home environment.  I asked the PT if it was OK for Sile to walk with family members and she replied that it was.  "Wrong answer," Sile joked (sort of).  So we'll be practicing.

The improvements noted yesterday have mostly continued.  The back pain is still there, but not in the debilitating way it presented over the weekend.  The nausea is still there and still awful, but it does abate from time to time.  Intestinal distress still occurs, but a little bit less frequently.  Progress, but a long way to go.

Counts have continued their upward climb with the whites at 1.7 and the platelets a whopping 68.  The nurse told me that these numbers are soon likely to decline a bit.  This is part of the normal progression of the transplant  - the counts will continue to trend upwards over time, but we should begin to see more up and down movement soon. 

Those of you concerned about my swimming fiasco yesterday will be relieved to know that I traveled to the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena today for a delightful, and very energetic, lunch time swim in the very respectable 78 degree waters of the 50 meter pool there.  Definitely more my cup of tea.

And despite the overwhelming clamor for more photos of pickle jars, I have decided to close this post with the most recent pictures of baby Una... and here they are: