W8&C

Thursday 8 March

Time for another check-up for Lara in Saint Luke's, one we had anticipated with varying degrees of trepidation since the previous one, a week ago. Over the past three days, Lara had felt better each day so we were hoping for better stats. Apart from that, Lara had set up an acupuncture treatment on Monday, expecting that it would bring on better results as indeed it did three weeks or so ago.

It is often indicative to look closely at the doctor's face as she (or he) meets you in the corridor for your appointment. No matter how hard they try sometimes to conceal what they are about to tell you, you can still read the gist of it in their eyes. This happened last week.

This time she was clearly upbeat as she met us, an impression Lara and I shared. I whispered something to that effect in Lara's ear - in Dutch. It turned out that the overall blood balance had remained stable compared to last week, be it that she is still in a condition of anemia (low blood values). All major values are still way too low but don't move, with the exception of neutrophils. They now stand at 0.43 per microL, dipping just below the minimum level of 0.5 required for a proper immune defense.

The latter is not without risk. It means Lara is now more susceptible of picking up a bug or something. She has to stay away from large crowds and be careful what she eats from where.

The prognosis remains uncertain. None of the labconsultants knew how to interpret the bone marrow samples. So for the moment we have to wait and see. Next Thursday they will do another blood test and take it from there.

Now we're off to the opera. Lara is wearing a mask.