Another Tough Month

I thought last month was hard, but a little over a week after Owen’s last treatment, we had to take him to the Emergency Room with a fever.  He had been tired all week, and not acting himself.  That Friday, I got a call from the school nurse and she said he was in her office and said that he wanted to just sleep all day.  He had a low grade fever of around 100, so I had Nanny go pick him up.  I was working, and thought maybe he needed to just sleep for a while at their house.  I talked to her in the afternoon and she said he had barely ate, then had checked his temperature and it was up to 101.   Well, that is our trigger, go to the hospital.

In the Emergency Department, they accessed his port to draw some blood and started an IV.  They also wanted to get an X-ray because he had been coughing for the past month and they wanted to see if he had pneumonia.  Before we could go to the X-ray room, his heart started beating fast, which in turn caused half of the ER staff to run into his room.  A heartbeat in the 240’s causes them to react quickly.  They wanted to hurry up and give him this drug that slows the heart down and brings him out of his SVT, but they didn’t want to do it through his port (which is actually the best way to give it according to the Cardiologist), so they were going to poke him with another IV on his arm!  I was trying to do anything I could to not have them do that, so I asked Owen if he could throw up (which I knew would bring him out of it).  He thought he could, and it was a success!  His heart rate came down, and we adverted the drugs.  Poor kid was starving afterward, but it was a good thing.

The X-Ray was “inconclusive” as to whether it was pneumonia or not, but they started him on the anti-biotic and told us we would be staying the night.  It ended up being a 3 night stay, because they wanted his blood counts to start rising before they sent us home.  They took him off all of his oral chemo to let his body heal.  We went back the following week to have his counts checked again and they were still not up enough to re-start his meds, which was actually a great thing!  That extra week really helped with all of his healing.

This past week was his spinal tap.  His counts were back up where they should be and he received his spinal tap procedure with IV chemo as well.  They did also start back up his oral medicine, but they cut it back significantly.  They will keep increasing it each time from here, but for now it is good for his body.

So much going on!  His baby sister is turning 1 this Thursday, so we built a set for me to take her one year photos.  I wanted a “model” that would be still to see how the background looked in the pictures, so Owen is my guy.  He wasn’t extremely thrilled, but he sits still.  I swear they do have clothes… these boys just chose not to wear them 😉