Ohhh thats why!

Well we finally found out why they keep us for count recovery. On Wednesday Critter got an infection. They always told us they were keeping us "just in case" and I can tell you after this week I am glad we spend extra time in the hospital.

Wednesday day Critter started acting tired and upset. By the afternoon he was running a fever. They started antibiotics (3 different kinds) and gave him Tylenol. The third antibiotic was almost done going in when Critter started acting upset again. This was about 8:00pm. I picked him up and held him and he went to sleep on my shoulder. Shortly after he started shaking. I got nervous and called the nurse in. She called the doctors and before I knew it we had a team of resident and attending doctors standing around me with about 3 other nurses pushing meds as fast as they could. If you think about it a fever is an immune response. Your body's response to the bacteria. Well if you don't have any white cells to respond to the bacteria you wont form a fever. So by the time Critter's body recognized the bacteria it had spread throughout his whole body. When the antibiotics attack the bacteria it kinda explodes releasing all of its toxins into his body. This is called a bacterial shower. His temperature went from 97.8 to 103.4 in 4 minutes. His skin became a funny color because the body was shunting blood only to the major organs which meant his arms and legs became a purplish color. His blood pressure dropped dangerously low and his heart rate sky rocketted trying to keep up with everything else. He also started requiring a lot of oxygen. Basically his body went into shock.

After a few hours he stabilized and slept. More doctors came to see him and decide if he should be transferred to the PICU. Then it started again. It happened about every 3 hours during the night. It always starting with him shaking and I would call the nurses. Luckily he showed this sign first before his blood pressure would drop. It gave the nurses enough time to get some fluids in him and made it easier to stabilize him which meant he didn't end up going to the PICU although we constantly had PICU docs in his room. By Thursday morning I had spent the entire day and night in a rocking chair holding Critter. I didn't sleep except for a few short cat naps in the chair. But by Thursday morning Critter was stabilized. He slept most of Thursday and a good part of Friday. Always in my arms in the chair. He did make it to his crib at night but during the day he had to be in my arms.

He is doing a little better now. His cultures showed that it was a really bad strain of Ecoli. They are now giving him a special antibiotic to target this strain of Ecoli and he hasn't had a fever since Friday night. He is still very sleepy and very grumpy. He is in a lot of pain (I guess Ecoli and chemo equals pain) so he is getting a lot of pain meds. We have also started over on trying to get him to eat. Between feeling sick and during the past week he has had mouth sores on and off (also painful). So some days he will take a bottle and some days he wont. We are still spending much of our time in the rocking chair. My back is killing me. It looks like we will not be coming home anytime soon. Our labs are still rock bottom. The docs predict another week to 10 days. They would also like him to finish his antibiotics before going home. If he was feeling really well they said they might send us home with the antibiotics but he is not feeling well so far. Today is day 20. I have to say thank you so much to everyone that has brought dinners and taken my children again and again. Thank you for all your prayers and kind words. They are such a support. We feel so bad asking people to bring dinners and babysit children month after month but you keep supporting us and I don't know what we would do with out it. Thank you so much!