I Spoke Too Soon

Remember last night, I posted she slept like an angel? Well stayed up late decorating our room (I hung up all our Christmas cards and some beautiful pictures sent from residents at a nursing home in Illinois, THANK YOU! We love them). I finally went to bed just before midnight and then the CA came in to do vitals, looked at me and said, I'll be back to check her in an hour. I looked at her through foggy eyes and said, "Why?" She showed me the thermometer, and it read 100.3! So sure enough the nurse was in soon thereafter and she was up to 101.7, so that's officially a "fever". Since her counts were so good yesterday, they didn't start antibiotics, but they did do cultures to make sure she doesn't have anything growing in her blood. The nurse was confident it was a side effect of the chemo, Ara-C is known for causing fevers. One dose of Tylenol and her fever was gone. Needless to say I didn't get the full night of sleep I was expecting.

She woke up this morning and ate pretty well, she loves those frosted flakes! It was a busy morning, PT, OT, Nutrition, decorated Christmas cookies (thanks mom) then we took the stitches out of her hickman line finally! The doctors rounded while we were removing the stitches, but had nothing new to say...same old same old. Then I tried to feed her some lunch and she wasn't having it. I could tell she was tired, so I rocked her. She didn't really sleep very sound though, she would dose for 10 or 20 minutes and then wake up. I ended up laying with her in my bed. When I rubbed her little head it helped her fall asleep, so we layed there sleeping off and on. I held one hand on her head, the other on her back. It was like heaven laying there snuggling with her. Even though she kept waking up, she would fall back asleep.

When she's awake, she's done nothing but beep. Once I called the front desk and said, Chelsea is occluded (that means her line is twisted and the chemo is blocked). The nurse said, "not again, my feet are tired!" She practically hung out in our room untwisting Chelsea and administering meds (anti nausea, benedryl, tylenol, and of course chemo!)

She woke up with super red cheeks, but no fever. I went to visit some friends in the PICU. They came back up with me to visit Chelsea and sure enough, she was hot and had a fever. It got up to 102 this time, but more Tylenol and it's gone again. The bummer of it is she has to stay in her room until she's fever free for 24 hours. So...at 3pm, her 24 hours started all over again! I'm going stir crazy! I like to get out and walk around just as much as she does. Well, I need to get back to the room, one of our favorite CA's, Joe is in there with her right now. He's a very funny guy, but also excellent at what he does. It sure makes the day go faster!