Home Already

Because I'm up in the middle of the night, of course I figured I needed to fit an extra meal in. Seriously, doesn't it make you hungry to be up all night? Don't worry Dream Big, it's a fat free snack!

Oh...about Miss Chels...well, I knew she wasn't feeling well, on the way to the ER and once we got there, she wouldn't lift her head, couldn't wake up fully, truly scary for me. We went to the other hospital in town this time since Friday's visit was less than adequate. More on that later. They got us right in and the nurses drew labs and cultures on both of her lines to see if there was an infection growing in there. It will take 24-48 hours to know for sure, but I'm betting there's nothing in there. They ran a gamut of tests, chest xray, RSV, the blood cultures, and UA for a UTI (they tried a UA with a bag taped inside her diaper, but then she had diarrhea and the bag wasn't so clean...so we just skipped that test after all.) The results surprised me, but I knew something bad was going on, so I've accepted it and now we know where to go from here.

RSV - positive
chest xray - pneumonia (positive)
CBC (labs) - showed she was dehydrated again
blood cultures - results to come

So like I said, she was pretty darned sick! It was definately a good thing to get her into the ER.

The ER doctor was fabulous, I was really impressed. Maybe he just really liked Chelsea so he spent extra time with us explaining everything (although hopefully he does that w/ every patient). He felt really strongly that what he saw on the xray was just the beginnings of pneumonia and it was caused by the RSV therefor it is a viral pneumonia. Just to cover our bases though we ran an IV antibiotic before we left (also ran some fluids through her Hickman). They also gave her Tylenol since she already had a fever (no fever to mask;) I'll also continue it through the night as needed until I hear otherwise from Dr. Nichols and the Oncologists. We have a script for an oral antibiotic to start tomorrow. They gave us the choice to stay the night at the hospital or to just treat her at home (clearly I opted for the latter.) He said they have lots of kids w/ fevers upstairs and I wasn't at all interested in exposing her (or myself) to any new bugs!

We are following up w/ our ped in the morning. The dr. at Children's said to just follow up locally b/c they've got a bunch of bad bugs going through their clinic and we don't need to expose Chelsea to anything new. (Like she's not going to be exposed at the pediatricians office, ha!) You better believe I'm bringing in my sani-wipes to the office in the morning! We won't start chemo tomorrow, that's for sure, I'd say it will be at least one week if not more. The ER doc guessed that it could postpone it for up to a month. Yikes! Talk about being off track. I have a feeling they'll try to get us in within the next couple of weeks.

The positive to all of this? More time at home, AND, if I happen to get sick (please pray I don't) at least I'll be home and not suffering trying to take care of her on chemo AND sick myself. It will all work out. I feel really good that we were in excellent hands tonight and she'll pull through this, although it may take some time. You wouldn't believe how she perked up after some fluids and a dose of Tylenol. The ER staff got a glimpse of my little angel, and I guarantee before we left there, they were in love. Who wouldn't be?!