A brief scare...

Starting from mid-last week thru the weekend, Soph spiked a fever anywhere from 99.2 to 100.5. Lurie has told us if she has two consecutive fevers of 100.4 or above an hour apart, that we'd have to come in.

We were really close last Weds, but her fever went down to 99.2. But on Saturday, she was up to 101.6, two hours in a row. So Jeannie and Soph were off to Lurie downtown, while I stayed home with Seah. I wanted to go, but we figured if all of us went, I'd really just need to get to RM house to put Seah down, and it'd be much better for her to sleep at home.

Soph went to Lurie ER on Sat night, and waited almost until 1am to get to her room. Needless to say, it was a long night for both of them. Seah and I headed over first thing on Sunday morning to keep them company.

The big deal with a fever is two things:

1. Chemo kills rapidly dividing cells, which include the cancer cells, hair cells, and blood cells. This is why we have to keep track of her blood count weekly. The past 2 weeks, her ANC (absolute neutrophil count) has been very, very low. ANC is a measure of a type of white blood cell that fight infection. This is why we have to be more careful around sick people, germs, etc.
2. Related to the above, is that we have to rule out a bacterial infection. If her fever is caused by a virus (common cold), then she'll need to fight it like the rest of us. It'll be harder b/c her white blood cell count is probably lower than the rest of us, but it's ok. But b/c she has a port, it's basically an open line into her body. If that port or any part of it gets infected with bacteria, we are in trouble. That's why we have to go in, get cultures, and see if any bacteria grows.

Fortunately, there was no bacteria, but she did have to spend a night in the hospital. She was discharged on Sunday afternoon, and probably slept almost 15 hrs from Sunday afternoon to Monday morning.

Otherwise, she's still in good spirits, battling the cold (we think) with some persistent coughing. Her ANC has rebounded from around 300 last week to almost 1100 this past Monday, so she is getting better.

The crappy news in all of this is that we have to go in for the second course of chemo the week of 4/22, so all of this starts over again. More chemo will kill off more blood cells, and we will have to be on high alert.

This is our life for the next 9 months at least.