Sunday, March 22, 2009

Fevers, Chemo and the Croup... Oh My

Good Morning everyone,

I know, I know... I've been slacking again. I am sorry. Thank you all for sticking with me and checking in to see what is going on with Mikey... and all of us. I hope that you are all enjoying your weekend. It's been an interesting week and a half for us here.

As you all know we got wonderful news on March 9. It seems that the Temodar has been keeping the tumors from growing. The MRI was stable :) Since his counts were great that day we didn't have to go back to the PDH until March 18th when Round 3 of chemo was scheduled to begin. When we got there on 3/18 Mike was flirting with a fever. His temp was 100, 100.2, 100.1, 100.4... and he was EXTREMELY cranky. I mean, Mike can be cranky on a regular basis but this was CRANKY cranky. So, they drew blood and more blood and took a stool sample and sent us home without chemo. I was able to give him Tylenol at home through the day and the fever stayed down. By Thursday morning at 9 it was back to 98 and all was ok.


When I took Mike in on Friday his counts were significantly lower than they were on Wed. The theory is that he was fighting whatever was going on and now we are getitng a clearer picture of his counts. His WBC was 4.2, HGB 13.3, Platelets were 180 and ANC was 1.4. All still in the normal range (except the ANC) but there was a significant drop in all of them since the 9th. They weren't low enough for us to start chemo though! The Dr called in the prescription to the children's pharmacy down the block from MSKCC that compounds the chemo and I was able to pick it up in less than an hour. Since he seemed to be doing ok we drove up to my in-laws for the weekend.

Then came Sat night... I put Mike to bed and then around 11 I heard Mike coughing. It was that seal bark that can only be one thing... the croup. I went back downstairs to get a couple of things and when I walked back in the bedroom and heard him breathing. Now, Mike is the kind of kid that when he is sleeping you need to go put your hand in front of his face to know he is breathing. It was a heavy breathing with a whistle-type noise at the end of the breath. So, of course, I paniced and called MSKCC's urgent care. We had seen the pediatrician on call in the PDH before so she knew who Mike was and was asking all sorts of questions. We decided that since his breathing was heavy I should bring him in. So we started to pack up. Matt had to work a double shift in Manhattan on Sunday so I had told him that he should just stay at his mom's with Katie and I would go in myself but he wanted to come down with us. He dressed for work b/c we figured we'd be there a while, left Katie at my in-laws sleeping and drove to Manhattan. We weren't there too long and the Dr said that while his breathing was heavy there was nothing in his lungs so we were sent home. Poor Matt stayed in the waiting room chairs sleeping so he could just go right to work at 6 while Mike & I headed back to Rockaway to my mom's at 3 AM.

He is doing much better now so that's a plus. He took the chemo for the whole 5 nights like a champion!! :) So, we have another round of chemo in April and then we have the next MRI on May 6.

I have more to tell you all but I'm going to do it in the next post... I hope you are all doing well! Please keep those thoughts and prayers coming...

Love,
Chrissie

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