4-11-16

Well we were 3 hours from making it to our appointment this morning at the clinic without coming in with a fever over the weekend. Each day since Friday we've brought him to Rochester to have his blood drawn for the anticipated stem cell collection. Which actually went fairly well without the central line and having to do it the old fashioned way with a two year old. He really does a great job, bless his heart. Molly had a cough and slight cold this weekend and we did our hest to keep the germs away from Drew. But after a fussy night, this morning he woke up with a fever. And since he is very neutropenic (meaning his white blood count is low--zero to be exact), I followed protocal and brought him into the ER in Rochester after quickly dropping Molly off at daycare. We have been admitted, in the same room actually as last time! (I wondered when we'd start to repeat rooms!) The team came in on rounds and are pretty sure that the swab sample they took from the mucus in his nose will come back as some kind of virus that he's fighting. He's coughing some now too and because I said Molly had a cold they are thinking that will explain the fever, along with him being neutropenic. With the line out that decreases our chance of having an infection, but they will wait to see if the cultures grow by tomorrow morning that they took today in the ER. And if not, tomorrow they will put in the muherker (catheter in his neck) for the stem cell collection, but the doctor anticipates it probably will be Wednesday or Thursday that the numbers rebound to do the collection. They will keep doing blood draws to watch the numbers to time the collection right. It sounds like they will put the central line back in after the collection is done, before we are done with this stay. Good news for pincushion Drew! So for now we wait. For nothing to grow again, and for his counts to begin to recover so the stem cell collection can happen. Drew is pretty whiny and restless. Not the easiest way to be in the hospital! So please pray for all of us! Dropping Molly off abruptly is always hard for her and it looks like this week Josh will go back to being Super Dad at home while I'm here all week with Drew.

The saga continues!

~Heidi