Maggie’s feeling rotten – still.  She’s on her second type of antibiotic now.  Second time, charm and all that bit.  The brains of this outfit look confused as to why Maggie didn’t roar back to life today but they don’t seem too overly concerned.  Maybe it’s just a poker face.  Maggie’s concerned, though.  With the MPRE licensing exam coming up on Friday and her flight to Greece on Saturday, she’s plenty worried.  But my understanding is that they just need to find the right magic potion and she’ll be right as rain remarkably rapid-o.  So, come on, potion #2!

Her temperature has cycled up and down all day today.  Dr. Loukas warned us this morning to expect that as her immune system kicks starts back up but the peaks should be trending toward normal, despite the wild fluctuations.  It’s hard to say if that’s actually happening or not but I can say for sure that she isn’t feeling very good.  And that, unfortunately, isn’t trending anywhere.  Blah.

They came in to gather blood to start another set of cultures but Maggie refused to give up the blood but it wasn’t an unwillingness.  They just kept stabbing her and she kept not bleeding.  Again, more unpleasantries.  I’m going to take this opportunity to again recommend doing your part to avoid getting The Cancer – quit smoking, eat right, stop snorting asbestos, whatever.  I can bear witness that any suffering that might be had from fixing your bad habits is a LOT less suffering than what will be had if you get The Cancer.  Not kidding here.  Real serious.

Maggie’s immune system is basically shot which means she’s a nice big, warm, cute, cuddly Petri dish for any bacteria that waltzes along.  For that reason, we are limiting visitation to just a very, very few folks.  And Maggie’s none too happy about that.  She can only hang out with me alone for so long.  But it’s for her safety.  Nuetropenia is a very bad, bad place to be.  Even the common bugs in your system can blitzkrieg an already ravished system like Maggie’s (that’s how we got put in the hospital!) so, to be blunt, keep your germs to yourself.  Maggie and I thank you in advance for your participation.

Also, please no flowers.  We know it’s out of kindness, love and well-wishes and, while she loves, loves, loves the attention (and flowers), flowers have pollen, dirt tends to have bacteria and stagnant water tends to be fertile ground for all kinds of growing stuff that could make more trouble for her right now.  And we’re currently all full up on trouble.

But seriously, Maggie will be fine.  This is apparently what happens sometimes with the chemo process.  That $6,900 Nuelasta shot is supposed to prevent this type of crash so it’s a little weird this is happening but hey, we’ve been doing this since late January and this is the first time we’ve had to play this particular game.  So….  Ok, we’ve played the game.  Now we want to go home.