Day +9: Trough? More like the Pits!

Today was the Changing of the Guard and the Nora/Ainate/Una team has been replaced by the Jim/Ralph team.  Nora took me over to the hospital this morning to give me the rundown of all I needed to know about Sile's care (a daunting list) while Jim stayed with Ainate (and Una) to help get them packed up.  One member of the N/A/U team was wise enough to catch a quick nap after the packing to rest up for the long drive home.

As I mentioned above, the "trough" is tough.  Sile feels completely "wretched" (her word) and says she didn't realize it would be this bad or go on this long.  She spends much of the day dozing - or trying to - I think with the idea of sleeping through as much of this part of things as possible.  She rallied, as always, for pictures of Una and the reading of your chatty emails and messages.  We even watched a bit of the Olympics coverage.

On the good news side her white blood cell count has climbed from .4 two days ago to .6 this morning.  To give you some perspective when she reaches 1.0 she's allowed to leave her room and go out into the hallways!  (Though to be frank she doesn't seem too interested in leaving her bed at the moment so I think visits down the hallway are low on Sile's agenda).  The good Dr. Nakamura told Jim:  "Numbers look better.  Don't expect them to go up every day, but this is positive".  A welcome message indeed.