Admitted to Hospital with Fever

Liam's fever still hasn't come down, he's had a fever almost non stop since noon Friday. Tonight he was around 39 degrees C when he got to the hospital for his daily antibiotics. After some Tylenol and waiting to see if his fever would come down, it only came down to around 38.3 C, so they decided it was best to keep Liam in the hospital.

Liam isn't showing any signs of illness, so it's frustrating to not know what could be causing his fever. His heart rate has also been higher than normal.

In the hospital sooner than we expected...

Week Interrupted

We were having a fun week, then damn you Mr Fever for visiting us this afternoon.

This is the same scenario we had previously. If Liam gets a fever while he's neutropenic, he has to be admitted to the hospital get IV antibiotics. He has no immune system this week, and we don't know what his body is fighting with the fever, but his body can't fight it at the moment.

We'll be in the hospital for a minimum of 48 hours. It'd be optimistic to think we'll get out Friday, but you never know.

There is always a bright side: a) Liam didn't get a fever during cycle 2, we are lucky it's been this long! With all 3 cycles of chemo, we've gotten out of the hospital on schedule b) It's air conditioned at the hospital, we don't have a/c at home, so it's hot in our house right now

Chemo Cycle #3

"Help doctor, I have cars in my eyes!"

We have a lot of self entertainment sitting in exam rooms.

We saw the doctor this morning (actually, we saw the head oncologist, a fellow AND a resident today). We got Liam's blood counts, his platelets were questionable last week to start chemo, but they were way above the minimum number this morning, without having to have a transfusion for platelets this cycle.

Around noon Liam got his anesthetic, then his "routine" lumbar puncture and chemo injection into his CSF. That only takes a few minutes, he's having a nap now (1:15pm). After a small amount of anesthetic Liam tends to have a nap. The anesthesiologist makes sure she can wake him, monitors his vitals, and lets him nap. He was exhausted this morning, likely after all his birthday celebrating yesterday.

Cycle #3 is the same as the first 2 cycles, he has chemo today, Tuesday and Wednesday, then IV fluids until Thursday afternoon. Assuming all is good, we will go home Thursday.

Cycle #3 is the last of the induction chemo. Unfortunately next is the high dose chemo, we don't know what is in store for that until we get there, but it will be much more tough than we are experiencing now. There are 3 cycles of high dose chemo, 28 days each (the current is 21 days).

Day 1 Cycle 2 In Progress

Everything is going as planned today, we managed to get Liam's nails cut, yay! All that Liam goes through, and yes, cutting his nails is almost the most difficult thing to do.

After the anesthetic, Liam had a little nap, then he popped right up and started playing again.

Not much to report.

First day of Chemo

Pretty uneventful day. Liam had his first day of chemo, it was just a day of sitting around. So far Liam feels fine, fighting bedtime as he always does! Today was day 1 of 3 of chemo for this month. We are admitted to the Children's Hospital for 3 or 4 days depending on how Liam does.

Stem cell harvest

Apheresis today, Liam will be hooked up to this crazy machine for a few hours (or more). They are collecting stem cells to use later with chemo.