Touch and Go

Things are a little bit touch and go with Matthew right now, and I thought I'd update, in case I don't get a chance to later.

Matthew is right smack in the middle of the 4 doses of IV chemo he'll receive during this round, and he's been looking pretty pale for the last few days. He's also tired and emotional. I think he needs another red blood transfusion, and the home health nurse who came out this morning agrees with me. She thinks he's also probably neutropenic. If so, he won't get his scheduled chemo for tomorrow, because it's count dependant. I'm not sure if that means they'll wait until Friday (which is what they did during IM 1) or if they'll just give him a smaller dose tomorrow (which is what the nurse told me about how this phase, IM 2, works when he was giving me road map details just before we started).

The other issue, though, is that he has a fever just above 100 degrees. My book says to call the clinic if a fever of 100 lasts more than an hour, but I've heard from a lot of moms that the clinic won't see him unless it's 100.6 or higher for more than an hour, or 101 for any length of time. So, I think it's likely that I'll be heading up to Primary's with him today, but it's possible I'll just be watching him closely and talking on the phone with his doctors.

If he does go up there for fever, and if the nurse is right about neutropenia, he'll be admitted, because they always admit if both fever and neutropenia are present.

So, we may be spending the night - or even the week if there's something wrong - at Primary's.

The nurse that came out today took blood for a CBC, and I'll have the results of that this afternoon. I'll keep updates coming as I have more information.

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers. At times like this, we really need it.