Thursday, December 7, 2006

Update # 78

Day T minus 5

Good Afternoon,

Here is the address for this hospital stay.

      Jeff Sandlin

      216 S. Kingshighway

      Division 5900 Room 5918

      North Campus

      Schoenberg Pavilion

      St. Louis, MO   63110

Now, on to Jeff's last few days.  This first chemo has not really bothered Jeff.  It can cause seizures though, so they have to give him a drug to prevent seizures.  The first dose of that med made him lightheaded but has not done that again.  A side effect of this anti-seizure medicine is raising blood sugar.  They check his blood sugar four times a day and he has had to receive 3 insulin shots.  He is on bag 12 of 16 of the first chemo.  When it ends tomorrow afternoon, he will still need to take the anti-seizure med for another day.  They say his blood sugar will then return to normal. 

Jeff is eating and drinking normally which the staff are not necessarily use to seeing.  With his usual drinking plus the IV fluids they were giving him, Jeff became overloaded with fluids.  They had to give him a couple of Lasix shots and reduce his IV to a fifth of what they are been giving him.  Then his Potassium was low so they give him a bag of that.

His counts seemed to be pretty good the last 2 days but I think they may be starting to come down today.  I notice Jeff is slowing down and sleeping a little more.  CG would do CBC's in the morning but Barnes does them in the evening.  So they will be doing that soon and I won't know the counts till later tonight.

I had a nice surprise yesterday morning.  I went to the cafeteria for breakfast and ran into one of the teachers from my school.  Her husband was at Siteman for some appointments.  She bought me breakfast and we sat and chatted for a while.  They both came to Jeff's room in the afternoon to visit with him.  He enjoyed their time together.

Overall, Jeff is doing well.  The doctor checking on Jeff in Dr. DiPersio's absence, says things are going great.  Dr. DePersio is also calling in while he's at that conference.

Every morning we watch that number go down and know we are closer to Day Zero.  You are working hard with your prayers and we definitely can tell their presence.  Thank you so much for watching over Jeff.  I pray God watches each of you.

love,

Marcia