Wednesday, July 21

I was keeping a close eye on Collin's temperature last night. If it were to reach 100.5 and stay there for four hours, or reach 101, I was to call the triage number and ask for the on-call heme/onc fellow. I told Bill I figured his temp would spike ovenight, since that's what happened in rounds 1and 2. A few times yesterday it went up to around 100.4, but then an hour later would be back down to 99 something. Around 1:00 AM, Collin woke up fussing, so I again took his temperature. My ear thermometer read 102.7, and my temporal thermometer read 101, so I called, and as expected was told to bring him in. As soon as I got off the phone, he threw up all over himself; I don't know if he threw up because he was fussing, or was fussing because he was going to throw up. I got him cleaned up, put him and the suitcase in the car, and headed for the hospital. We went right up to the pediatric heme/onc wing, and were admitted to the only available bed-our old room. Sadly we felt at home right away, and fell into our old routine. The residents and nurses checked Collin out; they did blood and urine cultures and had a chest X-Ray done to try to pinpoint the infection. He was given Tylenol and was started on the same two broad-spectrum antibiotics as the last two times we've been through this. At 4:30 AM his temp was 103.6, which is as high as I've ever seen it. He's in good hands though, and we've been through this before. His temp slowly dropped during the day, and this afternoon was 101. By tonight it was under 100. The attending physician said we'll probably be here at least three days.

Late this afternoon the charge nurse came and told me they were going to have to move us to a different room. The room we were in is a transplant room, so it is close to the nurses station and has extra monitors. Since we are not at the transplant stage yet and are not currently receiving chemo, they moved us into the regular med/surge hall. I completely understand the reason for the move and have no problem with it, but it was kind of a bummer to leave our familiar surroundings and nurses. As I carried Collin out of our old room, he got excited, and I think he thought we were leaving to go home. When we went down the other hall and into another room, he was a bit agitated for a while. I'm sure part of it was because he wasn't feeling very well, but I also wonder if part of it was because now he was in a different environment with different nursing staff who he doesn't know. Unfortunately the new room doesn't have a fridge and is in a very high-trafficed hallway (which is still very noisy despite the fact it's almost 10 pm as I type this!); however at least it is a private room (not all rooms in this hall are; having anything but a private room would send me over the edge right now!) and it does have a bird's eye view of the construction on the new Children's Hospital being built. Unfortunately right now Collin doesn't seem excited about watching the giant crane and other construction equipment. He did however seem to notice the Lifelion helicopter coming in for a landing when I pointed it out to him, and he smiled and pointed at it.

Here's hoping for a better night's sleep tonight!