Diane Jensen: Day 16, 104 degree fever

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Day 16, 104 degree fever

For New Years Eve, she got another 104 degree fever in the night and blood in her left eye. (Brandon said the party at the hospital must have really been something wild.) They did cultures because of the fever to see if anything is going on. Sometimes fever will present when the immune system is rebuilding. The eye problem was likely due to low platelets, so today she got a transfusion of them. The infectious disease team was called in to evaluate her history of fever, bumps and rash. They are going to suggest tapering the antibiotics slightly and the steroids is in process of being tapered. They found she has CMV (Cytomegalovirus), which is like mono-everyone has it and it can be latent in the body, but it will show up when white blood cells are compromised as with bone marrow issues. Today, Haline, Avery and Lauren came in and all the gals did lunch and nails. Tonight the fever and cough returned again, they ordered blood cultures and a chest x-ray. She doesn't feel to good tonight, hoping tomorrow will be a better day. She feels pretty wiped out-no walking today.

2 comments:

janericksonJanuary 2, 2015 at 9:17 AM
It sounds like we need to get back to boring. Big changes every day. You never know what to expect. Hope today is better news.
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christiJanuary 2, 2015 at 10:34 AM
I hope you are feeling better today. Sorry you haven't been feeling awesome :( Sending prayers your way..
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Diane is very thankful for any well wishes, even if she is not able to respond to all of them.

Diane's MDS Diagnosis

The hospital encourages visits when she is home or inpatient. Call first to insure she feels well enough at any particular time for visiting. Her immune system is severely compromised, so we ask you not to visit with young children or if you are ill. Currently she is an outpatient.

Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) is a bone marrow disease much like cancer. If left untreated, it will eventually lead to the failure of the bone marrow (requiring transfusions) or Leukemia.

The only way to prevent this is undergoing a bone marrow transplant. Presently, her blast counts are increasing faster than expected but have not reached the level of Leukemia. Her blood counts are lower now and she has had a transfusion to help with this. She is to proceed with the bone marrow transplant now because of how rapidly the MDS is progressing.

Diane will enter the LDS Hospital's Bone Marrow Transplant Unit on Wednesday, December 17^th. She will undergo alternating rounds of chemotherapy for about 2 weeks. The chemotherapy will kill the blood producing cells, as well as her immune system.

Once the blast counts are reduced enough, then Diane will receive a stem cell (bone marrow) transplant. Diane’s sister, Tracey, is a half match and is to be the stem cell donor. However, effort is still underway to get a full match in time for the transfusion. The purpose of the transplant is to have the healthy stem cells replace the unhealthy ones killed by the chemotherapy (in the bone marrow). Once the transplant is done she will be on medicine to prevent rejection for some time (estimated 6 months to a year).

Mid term bone marrow biopsy coming up on (day 17) Friday, Jan. 2 nd. Find out if more chemo might be needed after the results of that test come back. Then another biopsy about day 35. Transplant could take place around day 42 the doctor said.

At this time (June 30) no transplant is scheduled. The disease became active again about mid June. Her blast numbers increased rapidly within just a weekend. Had they been able to do transplant (June 8) it would NOT have been successful, and she would have gone thru much trama for nothing. She has started another round of chemo aimed at controlling the MDS to lower blast levels.

Both the chemotherapy and the stem cell transfusion will be very hard on Diane. We ask for your prayers of strength and comfort on her behalf.

This site will be updated with Diane’s progress.