Further improvements

Quite a quiet day yesterday. The consultant enjoyed seeing and hearing Pads. He is able to talk quite freely now but still lacking the spark to do much. The morphine is what's keeping him on the ward and the IV nutrition (TPN) is what's keeping him in hospital. So we've turned up the PEG feed from 5ml/hr to 10ml/hr and will continue to see if he can tolerate it being turned up. We clearly cant rush that: he sat  up for a while and enjoyed the change of scenery for about half an hour, then he started to feel ill.
The consultant said that his good blood counts are a bit artificial - having had GCSF to boost the stem-cells and infusions of platelets. He will bottom out again in the next few days - thus the need to keep a lid on visitors, in spite of the isolation sign having been taken down. Pads is in no state to receive visitors anyway: however well-intentioned, it would be a drain on resources he needs to deploy on getting better.
As predicted, conditions in his mouth are improving. The viscous drool that dogged him last week has gone - what a relief! The mouth ulcers are healing up. In fact he seems to be shedding his 'mouth skin', which has been slightly unnerving at times (a bit like peeling skin after sunburn!).
Disturbed nights continue though, with 'something' happening at 10pm, 2am, 4am, 6am and 7.30am. At 10pm and 4am his ear pain was hitting 5/10. At 6am they found that his temp had spiked to 38.3 and I thought I heard a Dr checking him and suggesting more antibiotics... He's already on at least one broad spectrum antibiotic so we're waiting for further guidance from the registrar, who should be along in a moment.