Admitted

The fever never broke and I ended up paging the doctor. Of course, he told me to take to the ER. He said with her blood counts so low, she would never be able to fight a fever on her own. And if I kept waiting, he said the fever would just keep rising. He was quite insistent that we get to the hospital.

I got her down there and lifted her into a wagon. They let the hemoc kids (hematology/oncology...they keep calling it hemoc) go through a side door to the ER, so as to avoid all the germs in the waiting area. The doctor had called ahead and they had an ER room all ready for her. They actually give her a special room called a negative pressure room. It does not allow germs to come in when they open the door etc. The nurse tried to access her port right away to draw blood cultures. She had some trouble however, because I don't think they do it very much. They eventually got the blood draws..they send her blood out for culture to try to determine what type of infection is going on. They also did her normal blood counts. They had her on an IV antibiotic within a half hour. Their goal is an hour. So I was happy with that. By this point her fever was up to 101.5. So we did the right thing. We tried to avoid it. We kept using different thermometers and such. Jerad is always the optimist, but in this case there is just no option.

Jerad arrived a bit later. His sister Tara had come down and was staying with our other kids. Evan just cried and cried when Jerad left. Bunk had to peel him off of Jerad just so he could go. The poor guy is really having a tough time with this. Well, we all are. So my heart was feeling really heavy that he was home and sad. Yet again. We had just left him yesterday and it was a long day too. He is not the type of kid that ever acts like this, but this is just another effect that the disease has on our family. It scares me.

The doctors did not know the cause of the fever. The blood cultures may tell us something. It also could be a virus. It could be her body reacting to the chemo and the low blood counts. They also discovered that she would need a transfusion of platelets. (yesterday she had gotten the red blood cells, so the other numbers were good) So they are going to give her IV antibiotics every eight hours..and the platelets. And watch her fever and/or any new symptoms. We can count on a 48 hour hospital stay, minimum, but could be more if her fever does not subside.

She was transferred from the ER to the Hemoc floor...it is starting to be our home up there. They told us it would. I went home to stay with my youngest kiddlings, leaving Jerad to sleep at the hospital with her. I am hating when we are apart, and it is happening a lot here lately. Jerad said she was in better spirits tonight. We are never allowed to give her tylenol (because it masks the fever) but once she was there they gave her some. He thought it perked her up. This is a picture that I took of her yesterday, but it sums up what she feels like now. And she still has a ton of hair, even though they thought it might be gone by this point.

One more small note. If I owe you a phone call, please forgive me. I have so many messages on my machine right now. Most I haven't had a chance to call back. There are several that I haven't even listened to. You would be amazed at how often my phone rings. I would say somewhere around every 15 minutes. All day. I can't possibly answer it that often. Hopefully things will calm down at some point and I will return the calls!

More later. It is late and I will be heading to the hospital with the kids early in the morning. Last night I was up with someone (my lovely dogs...another post needed on them..or Ally) about every 15 minutes..until 4 am when it finally settled down. Then the lovely dogs needed out again at 6:30. UGH.