Of Naps and Neutrophils

As most of you know, Jenny is very organized and structures her time well. One of her long-standing Sunday rituals is the Sacred Sunday Nap. As the name implies, this mandatory practice occurs after church, when she gets to snuggle down under a quilt and doze for a couple of hours, helping to guarantee that her Sabbath day is indeed a day of rest.

Jenny needed the Sacred Sunday Nap a little earlier today than usual, because she was woken up at 5 or 6 o'clock this morning by someone wanting to take her blood. She couldn't fall back asleep and finally resigned herself to a few hours of wakefulness until her blessed Sunday Nap mid-morning. Ahhhh....

Here's the news on the cancer front:

• Jenny's white blood cell count is down but her platelet count is up, which means her bone marrow is doing something good. Hooray!
• That Sacred Nap was even more important today because Jenny had some unexplained bloating and cramping that totally wiped her out. (As if getting woken up at 5am by someone poking a needle in your arm isn't tiring enough!) She's going to discuss this more with her doctors tomorrow to try to identify the cause.
• Jenny is probably not going home on Monday.
  
• Jenny's will receive her last chemo treatment on Tuesday, which means she could go home on Tuesday or Wednesday.
• In order to be released from the hospital, Jenny has to have a neutrophil count of 1000. (She's not 100% certain what the neutrophil count/measurement is but has been told it has to do with the ratio of white blood cells to red blood cells. According to an entry on wisegeek.com, a neutrophil is a type of white blood cell.) Right now, her neutrophils are at 700.
  

Stay tuned as more news on Jenny's release date becomes available. You know you'll read it here first, folks. In the meantime, pray for more white blood cells/neutrophils for Jenny!