Day 297: Good News Bad News

Well what we wanted to avoid has happened, last night Cristian developed a low grade fever. This confirms that his body has an infection and just wasn’t strong enough to fight it off before. We are very lucky that we brought Cristian in when we did. The fever came on over a couple hours and once he broke the barrier of 100.4 degrees we administered Tylenol to help keep things under control. We now know that our stay will be a little longer, more on that later.

As the fever spiked the doctors also ordered more blood samples to get a better understanding of what his body was doing. Cristian’s red blood cells had dropped a little, his platelets had dropped a lot, but surprisingly a lot of the other levels which were out of whack before were showing signs of improving. His body was now working to repair itself. Overnight Cristian received red blood and platelets to address those low numbers, but none of the other blood products that he was needing earlier in the day. We repeated the blood level test early in the morning and things had continued to improve across the board!

Based on the results from early this morning the doctors felt comfortable enough the release Cristian from ICU! This is a very positive sign that things are moving in the right direction. It also means that Cristian will be able to get some more uninterrupted sleep because the ICU has vital checks every hour compared to every 4 hours in the “normal” hospital.

Looking at Cristian it was clear that he is feeling better as well. He played all day long and was in a great mood. Every nurse and doctor who saw him today made a comment about how much better he looked. Additionally we went all day without any fevers!

From here it’s a waiting game for his body to recover. For us to go home he will have to show that his immune system is able to restore itself and increase for at least 2 days. Since his body just started being able to fight the infection, that could take a week or more. On top of that we have his lasted planned chemo treatment for this phase set for Tuesday. The doctors are currently planning to move forward with this treatment because it does not impact the immune system.

We are extremely thankful for everyone’s support throughout our journey and this latest bump in the road. We thank God for keeping our family safe, we know this is part of his plan and there are greater things ahead for Cristian.