Summer vacation is starting off with a bang - Eric is back in hospital 👎
On the plus side, Eric did make it to the waterslides with his class on Monday. He rode there on the bus with his classmates. He went on some slides with his friends and then they had lunch and just hung out for a bit. Of course, he bought some treats in the afternoon for the ride home.
After the big day Monday, on top of the very busy previous week, Eric took Tuesday morning to rest. Tuesday afternoon the counsellor at his school took him up to the middle school for a tour, since he had missed the class trip. At the school they ran into Joel and the counsellor took a pic for me!
Wednesday Eric's class was going to be having an ice cream sundae party and he had planned to go in for the party, but just as we were walking out the door, Eric decided he couldn't do it. He'd been coughing a lot and it was making him feel pretty miserable. We initially thought it was just a lingering cough from his last virus, but the cough seemed to be getting worse and not better.
Thursday morning we had Joel's Grade 8 leaving ceremony. Eric came along to support his brother, but wasn't feeling great during the ceremony and his legs started hurting. After Joel's class was finished, Chuck took Eric home and then came back for the rest of the ceremony.
We took a bunch of photos after with Joel's friends and then a couple other mom's and myself took a few of the boys out for lunch to celebrate. Eric elected not to join us but did ask me to bring him home some sausages. He spent the morning relaxing and then when Joel got home they played some video games together. Later in the evening Eric was feeling a bit miserable and hot. I checked his temperature and he had a fever. We are supposed to call the Oncologist on call whenever he has a fever because it could be a very serious infection due to his port, so they want us to come into the ER to be seen. Pretty much every time we call, Eric's fever disappears before we get to the ER and never returns, but buys us a 3 day hospital stay, which is very frustrating. Since I assumed the fever was due to the cough and not a blood infection, which I am not supposed to do, I waited a bit to see if the fever would go away before I called, which I am also not supposed to do. However, it did go away! We kept monitoring until bedtime and the fever never came back. We had a clinic appointment Friday morning anyhow, so this seemed like a win.
Friday morning, the first day of summer vacation, and still no fever, we headed to the clinic for a scheduled check up and platelet transfusion. I did come clean and tell Eric's NP that he had a brief fever the night before and she didn't scold me too much. He still didn't have a fever, but was coughing so she ordered a nasal swab to check for viruses and a chest x-ray to see how his lungs were looking. She emailed me later in the day when we were back at home to say that the swab was negative and the lungs were clear for pneumonia, but were looking a little inflamed so if he did have another fever, we would have to go to the ER. It was less than an hour later when Eric did, in fact, have another fever. We were both so frustrated that we'd already driven to the hospital and back once already that day and were going to have to go again. Eric was additionally frustrated that he'd had his port accessed once already that day, but it was de-accessed because there was no reason to leave it, plus we had a ferry reservation to the Sunshine Coast for that evening, so now his port would have to be accessed again. I called his NP hoping that since clinic was still open we'd be able to go there and not to the ER but she told us they aren't allowed to bring people into clinic after 4pm so we had to go to the ER. We got to the ER just before 6pm and were shown straight into a room. Surprisingly, it took four hours to see the ER doctor when we usually see the doctor so quickly because of that chance of blood infection. The Oncology Fellow came down to see us right after the ER doctor left, and said that Eric would be admitted. I had been holding out hope they'd send us home with a prescription for antibiotics since Eric actually has neutrophils, but no such luck. While they are happy he has neutrophils, they wanted to err on the side of caution and give IV antibiotics since he is still on oral treatment (which suppresses his immune system) and they weren't finding an obvious cause (virus or pneumonia) for the fever. Even though I was hoping for the best, I packed all of our stuff preparing for the worst. Unfortunately with the delay in seeing the ER doctor, we didn't get a room on T8 until 11pm. At that point it took another hour to get settled for bed while we waited for the pharmacy to send up Eric's meds and I got our things from the car.
Eric slept like the dead overnight, but woke up at 8am, which is just not enough sleep for a sick boy. When the doctor came by earlier today she said that his cultures weren't growing anything yet and his infection indicators are low, so it's probably not an infection. However, they'd like to keep him for the 48 hours post fever and continue the IV antibiotics. Eric hasn't had a fever since midnight and is feeling a lot better today, but still coughing. He has been playing on his switch and the Xbox while I went to Safeway to pick up a few food items for us. Now we're just hanging out watching Harry Potter. Fingers crossed we get to go home tomorrow, even though it will be late in the day if they do let us out tomorrow! 🤞
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