IC Day 11 Update

Another day without fevers! Nathan had a pretty good day today, he had a good sleep last night in the hospital and has been in a good mood for the past couple of days. The bad news Nathan got today was that his blood counts are real low again with his Neutrophils being .53 and his WBC was about 1.2. His platelets were good and his hemoglobin and red blood cells were a little low but not unusual. The bad news part is that it means that Nathan is once again neutropenic and he is not allowed to go into the playroom at the hospital. Not only are they making him stay at the hospital but now he has to stay in his room only and we have to make sure anyone who visits does not have a cold or any other sort of illness. To top it off Nathan feels good and looks healthy but is now confined to his hospital room - doesn't make much sense sometimes and it really doesn't seem fair. When he didn't feel good he was fine to go anywhere but now that he does feel good he has to stay put.

Dr Ali came up today and he said that he really hates to see healthy children in the hospital. I found it kind of ironic that he labelled Nathan a healthy child. Anyway, they are trying to see if we can somehow do his Vancomycin on an outpatient basis and though Shelley and I would love to be at home and have our family altogether and I'm not sure how he's going to pull it off. They do have a home IV program but Vancomycin is NOT one of the medicines that they allow that with since it requires a pump and a bit more specific timing and watching. Right now he gets Vancomycin every 6 hours so it really isn't feasible to do that on an outpatient basis. They are trying to figure out if they can dose him differently to do it on an 8 or 12 hours basis. I'm still trying to roll the logistics of that ... if we have to take him to the hospital every 8 hours for an hour of IV drip that means one trip would have to be in the middle of the night. Wake him up from bed and take him into the cold to the hospital really makes me wonder if that is right. I agree that Nathan looks healthy enough to be at home but if needs Vancomycin that often I'm not sure how we can pull it off.

The "oh, I didn't know that" thing that I learned yesterday was about fevers. I was always under the assumption that you don't want a fever to get too high because that can cause issues. Things like brain damage or having seizures but the real issue is how fast the temperature rises. You can get up to 42C and if it goes slow there are no real issues, but if you go from 38 to 38.5 real fast that can cause things like seizures and heart problems. I found that interesting.

Tomorrow is another day of I wonder what will happen next...