Day #2

9:30pm
The afternoon was good for Nick. Greg picked Colby up from school at lunch time and brought him to visit Nick (of course he was showered down before the arival) Nick enjoyed the visit and ended up falling asleep due to the Benadryl before the Vanco. I spoke with Greg at 6pm and Nick was feeling good, ate some dinner and they played Wii and legos. Greg called at 8pm and Nick spiked another temp. 102. He is sleeping and received some Tylenol. The doctor did not hear any crackling in his chest and believe the pneumonia is clearing. He could be battling a virus but with the fevers we have to take pre-cautions. They might add in the Azithromycin to cover everything. The ups and downs keep us worried. We will see how he does tonight and check his counts again in the morning. I forgot to mention that we stopped the 6mp pill for now. Nick had 6 more days on this and then a week off, before the start of his next cycle. The 6mp brings his counts down (which they already are) so it stopped for now.

1:30pm Update:
Just a quick update. Nick is feeling better this afternoon and he ate some lunch. He took the oxygen off, for a break, and his levels stayed normal, so he is oxygen free at the moment. They still have him on the antibiotics and Tylenol, so he does not have fever. He is sleeping now from another dose of Benadryl, before the Vanco. We will see what tonight brings and hopefully he will his counts will improve. The actual (hand count) ANC is 100, same as yesterday.

First Update of the day:
Nick had a good night sleep last night. Yesterday he spiked a fever at 6pm and then again this morning at 3:30am, which is a concern. He is on 2 antibiotics and this morning the resident was instructed to give him another antibiotic, Vancomycin. Over a year ago when Nick was in-patient for his 24hr drip of Methotrexate he ended up getting a fever and the antibiotic they gave him was Vanco. He ended up having an allergic reaction to the drug and he has not had it since. The plan this morning was to give him benadryl prior to Vanco and drip it in over 2 hrs. The drip seemed to go fine but he just started spiking another fever. I am not sure what is causing his fevers because the antibiotics he is on should be taking care of the pneumonia, so there could be something else going on. His counts barely moved from yesterday, which I expected and his ANC is around 154. So today we wait, monitor his oxygen levels, heart rate and watch the fever. We are still very concerned and will keep you posted if anything changes. Karen