Hooray for Hospital

After completing the long week of chemo we knew it was only a matter of time before Lexi's numbers dropped.

Monday she was good, and since we didn't have to go clinic, we went to the Crayola Experience with Kimmy and Sara.  We had a great time.  Especially since Annie was at day care!

Tuesday she had PT, and she did amazingly well, as always.  She continues to impress Miss Jackie with her progress.

Wednesday she had OT.  I could tell something was off, she had a lot of attitude and didn't want to do what Miss Lindsay wanted her to do.  I was half tempted to run her into clinic to get her checked, but decided not to.  I checked her temp, and she was fine.  We ran to target and did some shopping, and went home.  I checked her temp several times, and while she felt warm, it was still good.  While I was at work, Shawn checked her temp again.  99.5, 99.8, 100.5.  Once I got home from work, we hit the magic number (101.0) and called the on call doctor.  Got told to go to the ER for antibiotics, and if she was neutropenic (ANC below 500), she would get admitted.  (What is ANC?)

I got to the ER, and they were super busy.  It was so bad, they had someone directing traffic on where to park.  Inside the ER was standing room only.  Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long, as Lexi is not allowed to wait in the waiting room.  Once we got back, the nurses were clearly not use to having to access ports.  I could tell they wern't quite sure what they were to do.  On top of that, her port was acting up.  After two failed attempts, they called down nurses from the peds floor.  They were able to get her accessed and get the necessary blood drawn.  But it was not easy.  Then we got to deal with a nurse with no patients for dealing with cranky three year olds at 10:45pm.  She kept insisting that Lexi needed to keep her ID band on.  It was big enough to fit around my wrist, and Lexi was too busy fighting people poking her to keep it around her wrist.  Even after she puked on it, she wanted her to wear it.  Uhhh...NO!  Finally got her blood test results back.  Her ANC was too low to count.  So we got admitted and moved upstairs fairly quickly.  By this point its after 1am.  They tried to pull more blood for more tests, and still couldn't get it to work right.  After trying a few tricks, they gave up by 3am and started her on her second round of antibiotics.  But this was a fight all its own.  Lexi had only slept for about an hour by the time they had to get this started.  They had to check her BP, temp and other stats every 15 minutes while giving the meds.  It took over half an hour to get everything set up because she was being so "cooperative."  Finally got her settled by by a little after 4, and by 5 I finally got to get a little sleep.  And up before 8 for shift change and breakfast before Lexi got up.

Later in the afternoon, Dr. Phil came through.  He told us that her ANC numbers bottoming out was 100% expected, but he thought we had another day or two before we'd hit that point.  If he had known her numbers were that low, he would have just straight admitted her, rather then sending us through the ER.  Hindsight is 20/20.  He said we should expect to be in the hospital through at least early next week.  We need to get her fevers cleared and her ANC trending upwards.  Right now the treatment plan is monitor/treat fevers, give antibiotics, and monitor blood counts.  She is in no immediate danger, and this is just a waiting game.  It just means all the chemo meds are working like they are suppose to.