Sorry for not posting a whole lot lately. I'm still trying to regain my footing after St. Baldrick's and a slew of other activities and events that happened in a huge cluster during the month of March. March and April are always just extremely busy for us.
Ryan has been doing really well, but the past few days he has seemed to be fighting a cold or something. He had green discharge from his nose a few days ago, and then I started getting a sore throat and mini cold the next day, too. I don't know if its from allergies because of the wind/change in weather/seasonal stuff, or something that I caught from Ryan. We both have been home, and haven't had much contact with the "outside world of germs" lately. He has been playing outside quite a bit with our neighbors, though. Who knows, it's a total toss up between something contagious and allergy overload.
In any case, early this morning, around 4 am, Ryan woke up complaining of throat pain and nausea. I took his temperature and it was hovering somewhere between 101 and 103 deg F. I couldn't get an accurate reading despite having a new temporal scanner. I figured it was closer to 101 or 102 at the most, because he was chatting with me and didn't seem hot enough to have a fever of 103. I called the pediatrician on call at City of Hope knowing that they were going to ask us to bring him in. Anytime he has a fever that's over 101, he will have to automatically go in.
So the phone call was made, orders were given to take him in. I woke up Jason and he decided that he should take Ryan and I should stay home because I'm also sick, and I'm supposed to have surgery on my leg tomorrow to remove the last remaining screw from my ankle.
Jason took him in, they drew blood for labs and decided to admit Ryan as an in-patient for observation, antibiotics and fluids because of the fever. This morning, when one of his doctors was doing rounds she decided it would be best to keep him there for three days as an in-patient. She wants to be overly cautious with him because of his weakened immune system. She wants him to stay until they get the results back from his blood cultures, to make sure that he doesn't have any infection(s) or other issues. His blood pressure is also running low (which is has been, sporadically, since his transplant), and so they want to keep an eye on that as well.
Jason reports that Ryan is in good spirits except for the fact that he's a little perturbed about having to stay at the hospital for a few days. He wants to come home already. He's DONE with hospital stays.
I want to add that hospital stays like this, following transplant, are VERY common, and we have been extremely fortunate thus far, because this is Ryan's FIRST in-patient hospitalization since he was discharged post-transplant in December. I belong to an online community of parents of children with relapsed ALL, and most of the children who have had a bone marrow transplant are usually in and out of the hospital following initial post-transplant hospitalization for fevers, infections and other complications. When Ryan was an in-patient last year, I also saw other COH families with post-transplant kids who were in & out of the hospital following transplant, too, so I feel that we have been extraordinarily lucky. My gut feeling is that this is just a cold/sore throat, possibly even strep at the worst, but even then, this is a relatively minor complication (knocking on wood!).
Anyhow, I didn't get to sleep until 7 am this morning and woke up around noon. I am going to get ready to go to the hospital to relieve Jason for a bit. He will be there with Ryan for most of the three days because of my foot surgery tomorrow. Jason and I discussed the possibility of postponing my surgery, but decided that it would be best for me to just go forward with it anyways. Our friend, Rochelle, has offered to help with the logistics of getting me to and from the hospital tomorrow and baby-sitting me, so to speak, since the surgery will be under anesthesia. It's a relatively minor surgery, and I'm looking forward to life without anymore annoying hardware in my leg, especially that ridiculous screw which has been irritating the crap out of my ankle tissues and causing me to still limp when I'm tired, despite it being nearly two years since the original fractures.
Anyhow, looks like a fairly busy next few days, but we'll get through it. It's nothing compared to last year. NOTHING! Piece of cake compared to that.
Not sure what is going to happen with the Camp Ronald McDonald Walk for Kids on Sunday now, in terms of our participation. We were looking forward to participating and I kept saying that nothing will keep me away from attending, even if I had to just sit on a bench somewhere (because of my surgery), but I wasn't anticipating a hospitalization for Ryan. It doesn't look like we'll be able to make it this year. That's totally disappointing, but considering the circumstances we don't really have an option. If you'd still like to help, though, please click here to go to our Walk for Kids page. It is greatly appreciated because Camp holds an extra special place in our hearts for all that they do for so many pediatric cancer families like ours. ...Oftentimes, friends and family ask if there's anything they can do to help and that truly is a great way to help our family, because Camp is such an integral part of our healing process, and if you support Camp, it benefits our family directly, as well as benefitting hundreds of other pediatric cancer families.
I will keep you all updated with Ryan's progress. Thanks for stopping by.
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