After Christmas, Shannon’s blood cell counts rapidly recovered. Sometimes they will use an injectable drug called filgrastim to boost white blood cell production, but Shannon didn’t need it. She started producing plenty of blood cells on her own. Once her white blood cell count came back to normal range, her stomatitis (throat irritation/pain) went away. They discharged her on December 30th, which was earlier than expected.

Shannon’s pain was improved as well. She feels like the donor’s stem cells are just making her feel better all around, less bone pain, less joint pain, etc. Since her counts were doing so well, they’re only making her follow up in the clinic twice a week instead of three times per week. She had her first clinic visit on 1/2/25. They’re giving her IV infusions of magnesium at each clinic visit because the anti-rejection drug she’s on depletes her magnesium levels. They’ll switch her to oral magnesium soon. Also, they left her 3 Lumen Central Line in her chest. We have to flush it with saline twice a day and the clinic does a sterile dressing change on it once per week. Labs are drawn from it twice a week at each clinic visit.

At home she’s pretty much stayed in our room and mostly in bed. She’s been very tired and mostly sleeps. This is pretty normal activity after a bone marrow transplant. At our clinic visits, we park in a garage that’s across the street from the hospital. There’s 2 sky bridges that connect the hospital so we don’t have to walk outside. The first clinic visit, I put her in a wheelchair and pushed her to and from the clinic. From the next time and on, she wanted to walk. I measured it and it’s 0.4 miles one way from the garage to the clinic, she she’s getting around 0.8 miles of walking in twice a week.

Before she discharged, she had a minor cough which we just attributed to her stomatitis she had experienced. However, it gradually got worse after going home. We brought up our concerns to the clinic and they did a chest xray, swabbed her nose for viruses and also did a sputum culture from some stuff she coughed up. Everything came back negative. Over the weekend of Jan 10th, her cough got progressively worse and I could her a lot of phlegm rattling around each time she coughed and when she was breathing. The clinic didin’t seem too concerned because she didn’t have any fever. Well, on Tuesday evening 1/14, she felt hot and her temp was in the 99’s each time we checked. It was slightly elevated but not at the threashold for bringing her to the hospital(100.4 F). Over the next few hours her temperature slowly went up until it hit 100.7F. So, off the the ER we went. In the ER her temp went up to 101.8F. They did a CT of her chest which showed pneumonia on her right side. However, all of the nasal swabs and sputum cultures came back negative. Her white blood cell count was elevated too, a little above normal. They admitted her but we had to wait 18 hours in the ER. They finally got her a room on the BMT unit.

They consulted Infectious Disease and also Pulmonary doctors. Infectious disease doctors just made sure she was on the right combination of IV antibiotics. The pulmonologist did a bronchoscopy on her. The sedated her, and put a little scope down into her lung. They enter through the mouth. They didn’t see much except for a lot of mucus. She’s been coughing up a storm. They’ve had her on a little oxygen too. Anyhow, they took some samples of the mucus in her lung and sent it to the lab to run all kinds of tests on it. We wont’ get results for days, weeks and months…depending on each bacteria and fungus they tested for. Some tests come back quicker, and some take 6-8 weeks or more.

In the meantime, shes’s improving, coughing less, breathing better, no fever and they’re talkiing about sending her home on Monday 1/20/25.