IC Day 4 Update

Unfortunately, I get to do this update from the hospital. We went into the Cancer Clinic today for another treatment. They had trouble getting his port to give blood so we ended up there quite awhile. They were trying to do extra blood tests to figure out why Nathan had a fever the last two nights. While we were waiting for them to get the port working Nathan developed a fever again and so Dr Mpofu decided to admit Nathan to RUH. We are in room 3017 and Nathan is already asking when we can go home!

We are here for a minimum of 48 hours on general antibiotics while they do a blood culture on Nathan's blood work. Once the results come back and there is something specific to treat then we would be on a different antibiotic and could be in the hospital for another week. If it comes back clear then we would likely get to go home again. Right now they are suspecting an infected line of his port. If it is, they will still treat with antibiotics and that should take care of it. If that does not take care of it then he would have to have surgery to get the port taken out and another surgery a week later to replace it. But one step at a time, first they need to figure out why he is having such high spikes in temperature (39.2C / 102.5F).

You really appreciate the work the Cancer Clinic does when you get to experience other nursing. Simply because they are not used to accessing ports they had a really tough time with it today and that left Nathan very upset. They had three different nurses try four different times over 20 minutes before they got it, and it was a guy that had never done it before that got it to work. It usually takes Jan or Kathy about 2 mins to get it working. Additionally, they are going to have to draw blood from his arm again today and that is going to make him very UNHAPPY!

On the up side, Dr Mpofu indicated that Nathan is doing very well with his treatment and he will continue on his protocol while they try to solve this. That means that, at least for now, we are still on track with his chemo treatments. Oh, and the other upside is that Nathan has already had a Popsicle - about the only thing he likes about the hospital!