This Machine Killed Cancer

Rebekah, here. 

I’m going to attempt to be coherent in this post, but the hours of sleep I’ve logged are at an all time low so I can’t really tell up from down.

On Tuesday afternoon I had to rush Shayne to the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic (our own special emergency room because his immune system is too weak to go to the regular emergency room). He spiked a fever of 101 which is dangerously high because he was already neutropenic (fancy for doesn’t have an immune system, at all). He was also to dizzy to stand up or walk on his own, and he started throwing up - a first since he stopped getting etoposide.

As soon as he got the floor, they started giving him high dose IV antibiotics. Sitting up was still making him sick, so they moved him up to a room on the 4th floor to be admitted. The time line in my memory gets out of whack here, but over the past two days he’s had a fever that hovers between 100 and 103, his had trouble speaking and finding words (that’s better now), he’s gotten 4 units of blood (probably with more to come) and a mega dose of antibiotics. When he’s not sweating or aching so bad that it hurts to lift his arm, he’s mostly been sleeping.

They’re still waiting on the culture to tell exactly what’s causing the infection, but they think it might be strep.

I didn’t think our trips to the hospital could get any more stressful, but this has been the absolute most terrifying trip yet (yeah, including the time we found out the lymphoma had moved to his brain). We’ve gotten pretty used to Shayne feeling okay one day and then in the hospital unexpectedly the next, but we’ve yet to be faced with the daily unknown fact of whether or not they’re going to move him to the ICU.

The biggest bummer of all of this is that it’s probably going to delay his transplant. He definitely can’t do anything more with the BMT until his infection is gone, but there’s also a chance that his brand new central line will have to be taken out. That would start off a snowball chain reaction of events - maybe more chemo, putting off the BMT for too long, not being able to harvest the stem cells next week.

I think our niece Kate would put it best by yelling “Yucko!” - which is really just a substitute for me peppering this post with a massive amount of profanity.

xorebekah