Transplant B, Day +11: "Just Say No"...to Gout

Not much to report today. They STILL don't have my M-spike from last Thursday...maybe I'll get it tomorrow. I have another blood draw tomorrow for cancer markers, and I moved my clinic appoint to the earliest one they had (10AM) in the hopes that they might have this data available for BB at my discharge appointment on Tuesday at noon. it seems unlikely.

White blood count was 8.4. Platelets inched up to 31. Hemoglobin is 9.9 (that's where it was yesterday, too...I mistyped). Electrolytes were good, including potassium at 3.7 (go potatoes!)

The only thing a little out of whack was the uric acid. Normal is 3.5 to 7 (m/dl or whatever) and mine was 9.3 yesterday and 9.5 today. Some of this is normal as a result of the body getting rid of the cancer cells, white cells, etc. However, it should have come down by now. There's something called Tumor Lysis Syndrome after chemo that results in a lot of markers being too high. Uric acid is one of these. You don't want prolonged elevation of uric acid, believe me: gout, kidney stones, general renal failure...not so good.

So they gave me a 30-minute infsion of Rasburicase [insert Rasputin joke here, thus making it the SECOND time I've reference Tsarist Russia in my blog). This should significantly reduce the level of uric acid in my system (it evidently sorta "resets" it and is much more powerful -- and expensive -- than the Allopurinol which is what they gave me for uric acid when I first showed up here).

That's about it. Everything else is very normal except CRP which is still in the 60s, but I remain convinced that's from hematopoesis.

Tomorrow, Jill goes back to see the kiddies and I'm here for a couple more days on my lonesome. I'll let you folks know when I get that M-spike data back.