Sunday, February 8, 2009

Weekend visits to the hospital

Dylan started coughing late Friday night, he told me his friend at school had been coughing all over him during the week (now he tells me!) It' a fine line with balancing everyday life with a compromised immune system, but I do not want Dylan to be a boy in a bubble, so these are the risks we have to take in order to maintain life quality. By midnight he had a very high fever so I gave him Tylenol (Panadol) because I knew his counts were fine and he has no lines (medi-port) so blood infection was not the usual concern. Then out of nowhere, Dylan got a blood nose, it was pouring out, I could not believe the amount of blood! Tim pinched the top of his nose while he held his head over the bathroom sink and I held a cold compress on the back of his neck, but it would not stop, after 20 minutes we got him to urgent care and of course it had stopped by then. They gave Dylan a 24 hour IV antibiotic, checked his counts and sent us home at 7am. Dylan's platelets were over 100 and his neutrophils were 2.3 Once he got home, his nose started gushing again, and we repeated the same scene we had done earlier, only this time we bundled him up and took him outside in the cold, and his nose stopped bleeding almost immediately. Fevers continued throughout the day on Saturday, and we dosed him with Tylenol round the clock. This morning at 6am Dylan's temperature was over 40, I called the hospital who said since his counts were ok, just persist with Tylenol. I gave him a luke warm bath which got it down to 39. The hospital then called to check on him an hour later and they advised we come in for more IV antibiotics. An x-ray was taken to out rule pneumonia, as the doctor could hear some crackling in his chest. We are waiting to see if they decide to admit him.