Monday and Worthy of a Post

Hope everyone's weekend has treated them well.  Unfortunately for us, Tom failed at following the "keep it boring" instructions.

This means that on Saturday, Tom was brought into the ER and treated for sepsis (their fancy word for, "we don't know what kind of serious infection you have, but you have one").  Six hours in the ER and then we were admitted into oncology around 11-11:30pm, where they spent the entire night trying to get control of his fever.  The highest it got to was 103.9 (39.94C for you non US folk) and after much deliberation, consideration of an ICU stay, ice packs on the body and some tylenol, he finally dropped into the 99 range around 6am and they were able to give him the platelets and blood he needed. 

Yesterday he remained in the 99 range and then very slowly decreased, received two more units of blood in the evening/night and reached the 98 normal range in the middle of the night and has remained.

Today they said they were able to get a "gram positive" read on the blood cultures they drew on Saturday.  So he indeed has some sort of bacterial infection and they are treating him with antibiotics that target that specific range.  He already looks a lot better, residual headache but he seems to be holding well and his blood counts this morning showed that he responded to his transfusions.  The last time this occurred was Sept 2nd when he had e.coli ... which when he said they told him his cultures were gram positive I asked the likelihood of it being e. coli. 

The nurse told me that e. coli tends to be the culprit quite a bit.  She also said that these secondary infections that bring chemo patients in tend to more often than not be some sort of bacterial or fungal agent that is normally present in or on the body, but with compromised immune systems, the body just gets over run with them.  That was comforting, not. In any case, he seems to have responded quite well and quickly.  Saturday-Sunday night was a rocky patch, but it all worked out.  Hoping to be home soon. 

On another note, he is currently down getting his bone marrow biopsy done.  They were able to fit him in today, so he doesn't have to wait until Wednesday to do it now and will hopefully have results sooner as well.

Hope everyone is keeping well!