Today Nadia had a platelet transfusion – Thank You Donors!
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We had a bit of a scare this morning. The nurse came in and did Nadia’s vitals and everything was fine. Later on I learned that Nadia was actually awake when the nurse came in the room. I was still half-asleep, not wanting to stir too much to try and get Nadia to sleep as much as possible. I really think sleep is important. The nurse said that when she was doing the vitals Nadia kept shushing her (in a really cute way, of course). It was like she didn’t want to wake up her daddy. A good girl. I think I’ll keep her 😉 .
As the nurse was leaving the room Nadia noticed I was awake, expressed her excitement and gave me a hug. A really nice hug. A really long hug. She started shivering. The shivering was getting worse. I (reluctantly, because it was such a nice hug…) told her to hold on a sec while I got her jacket and changed her wet nappy. Maybe she is just cold, I thought.
This did not help. I started cuddling her close trying to warm her up and it dawned on me, maybe something is wrong? It seemed unlikely since her vitals were fine right before we had our first hug of the morning, but hey – we are in the hospital, why risk it. So I pressed the call bell.
The nurse came in and I told her Nadia was shivering violently, could she have a temperature? Sure enough, she did. She ‘Spiked a Temp’.
Soon after we saw the doctor, they started some antibiotics, some Tylenol, and Nadia was back to her usual self in no time. The doctor told us it would be very unusual for a bone marrow transplant patient not to spike a temp. I guess they forgot to tell us this. But we know now.
Remember, Nadia’s immune system has bottomed out. Actually, today it officially bottomed out. The white blood cells and neutrophils are both too low to measure. Nadia is in a very delicate time where she can catch anything and not be able to fight it off. She has no immune system. We have to put our trust in our doctors, nurses, isolation procedure, and drugs now until her immune system starts growing again.
So, Nadia will remain on ‘broad’ antibiotics for now. These broad antibiotics handle most common, nonlethal (in people with immune systems) viruses. They took blood and urine samples today to see if anything dangerous caused the. Since they will be trying to grow things in petri dishes, the longer we go without hearing anything means that nothing has grown in the dishes so far, which is good news. So no news is good news 😉 . If something does crop up they will specifically tailor the medication to attack that particular virus. It is a bit scary, because we are in a hospital, where people end up when they have the most serious viruses. But this is also why we are in isolation.
We were also told that when the new stem cells start to engraft, we are to expect Nadia’s temperature to spike. But it is too soon for that at day +5!
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“I like this one. One dog goes this way and the other dog goes the other way, why not?” “One dog is going East and the other dog is going West, so what?”
(couldn’t resist)
(I miss Einstein)
