Last friday I woke up at 7:15 a.m. to his heart rate being elevated and setting off the oximeter alarm. I thought he might be in pain so I went and gave him pain medicine. I repositioned him and I could immediately tell he had a fever, he was burning up. I took his temperature and it was 102.0! We are supposed to get him in within and hour of the temperature reaching 101.5 to get antibiotics and I had no idea how long he had this temp. He was also bright red and taking very shallow breaths.
I called the on-call nurse practitioner and she told us to go in immediately if I felt comfortable driving myself, otherwise call 911.
I made a few phone calls and his Aunt/nurse, Maya, was able to go with us. I got ready as quickly as possible and we rushed out the door. Traffic was bad but we eventually got to the ER. The nurses moved quickly when they realized that Nick was having difficulty breathing, he was retracting in his neck area. They gave him oxygen and within 15 minutes he was doing much better, just with the oxygen. His oxygen saturation never went down, which is odd, but just a little oxygen helped him a ton. They also took blood cultures, catheterized him for a urine sample and gave him a broad spectrum antibiotic.
They took a chest x-ray and compared it to the one he had about 5 days earlier and noticed some changes and decided it looked like he might be getting a little pneumonia but the antibiotic they gave him would help take care of that. But he was still working to breath so they decided to admit him.
Nick slept. He pretty much slept for the next two days.
They continued the antibiotics and we waited to see if the blood cultures grew anything.
The next day he was doing fine! It was so strange. He was still retracting a little and he still has the stridor but he really was doing so much better. But they couldn't release us until the blood cultures came back.
They came back the next day and they were negative but his urine grew pseudomonas and a strep.
So we got to go home Sunday on two antibiotics.
Nick is doing good, he is acting like himself again, well like himself on chemo. He is still very weak and is not able to hold onto his toys and play like he normally is able to.
He just seems so frail and every day it seems like he is dealing with something new. It breaks my heart to watch him fight so many different obstacles. The best I can do is hold his hand to help him through everything and pray that God will heal his little body.
Thank you so much for the kind words and for the prayers. Please continue to pray for little Nick, he is only halfway through chemotherapy and still has a lot of fighting to do.
Trying to get him to smile....
Got it!!
Sweet face boy!
His smile is so big and adorable:) My heart aches for Nick and your family. I will keep him in my prayers. Hopefully he will get a little break for awhile!!! Stay stong!
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