The Count Rollercoaster

Numbers are not really my thing. I don't remember them easily and so I find them difficult to look at by themselves. Thus, when we started getting counts every day for mom I decided to take it upon myself to make graphs. Personally, I just find graphs easier to look at than a list of numbers. It seems as though the doctors pay attention to thresholds much more than they do trends, but to me trends are easier to watch. So, each day we would add the new numbers into the little spreadsheet we made and see the graph change. I know, I'm a dork - whatever, it's interesting to me :) So, we have graphs of white blood cells, packed cells (i.e. red blood cells), platelets, neutrophils (i.e. baby whites), creatanine and Urea/Nitrogen (both a test for kidney health). The packed cells and platelets go up and down as mom gets blood, and now that they are giving her fluids every day the kidney tests are not looking as high. The whites and neutrophils are the ones we've been watching to see if Brandy's stem cells are grafting into mom's b. So here is what it looks like from the day prior to the transplant until today:

A few things to note -
1) normal whites are at 4500 - 11,000, so even the high points on this graph are pretty low
2) you see why we have to be crazy about her not coming in contact with anything that could give her an infection!? check out those days 9-13...it was so low the tests just came back as <50.
3) those peaks as it was going down I find interesting, don't know what it means, just interesting
4) the whites are supposed to start increasing between day 14 and 21...which it did
5) the white are NOT supposed to come back down...which it did

Her counts not making huge jumps after it started increasing, and then coming back down means that Brandy's stem cells have definitely not grafted...yet. It doesn't mean they won't, we just know they haven't yet. So, that's where we are. I could be concerned, and I was for a bit. Until I realized that my hope is not resting in medicine. I'm not expecting the bone marrow transplant to heal my mom. God may USE the transplant, but my hope is in him, not what he uses to do it. And then this morning I read: Now, this hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Romans 5:5) If I put my hope in the outcome of the transplant I could be disappointed, but if I put my hope in God I will not be. And so we continue to ride the rollercoaster of blood counts...we shall see if we go back up or keep going down. I will try to keep my emotions from going up and down with them.