From a Promising Start to a Rough Day

So Katie's day started out on a high note, with her numbers being up pretty significantly for her. Her platelets climbed to 66. Her white blood cell count climbed to 570. Her ANC climbed to 20. And her monocytes, which are necessary for neutrophil production, climbed from a mere 4% yesterday to a whopping 30% today. For those of you who have gotten lost in all of the technical terms and acronyms we have been posting lately, the neutrophils are the N in ANC or Absolute Neutrophil Count.

From those good signs, things went down hill fairly quickly. Her temperature fluctuated up and down all day long ranging from 38+ degree fevers to 36.5+ low normal temperatures. Every time her temperature climbed over 38, she was given Tylenol to bring it back down. On top of the recurrent fevers, she had her very first allergic reaction today. She reacted poorly to her Vancomycin antibiotic today, developing large hives all over her head and body. She was quickly given a dose of Benadryl to combat the allergic reaction and the Vancomycin was allowed to continue flowing through the IV.

She spent the rest of her day either feeling bad, or sleeping. Much of her time was spent in something she calls her "birdie nest". The birdie nest is a large chair in her room that we fill with pillows, leaving a large depression in the the center, and cover with blankets. She snuggles into this nest quite happily and will spend hours in it playing and napping. The picture that I uploaded with this blog entry is of Katie in her birdie nest.

The final negative straw for the day as far as I am concerned is that she is now vomiting blood. She started when I was on the phone with Amy around 8PM tonight, getting the evening update. She vomited blood again at 10PM. The doctors have already taken a look at her, and believe that it may be the antibiotics that are irritating her stomach lining now and they are going to start giving her some stomach coating medications to counteract this new irritation. After getting this last update, I told Amy that she couldn't call with any more updates tonight because the news kept getting worse.

Josh and I spent most of the day at or near the barn. We did get out a do a little fishing, but the fish failed to cooperate and we didn't get a single bite. However, we did have a good time just being outside in the sun and the fresh air. Josh's cold is mostly unchanged. He coughs a little during the day but sleeps soundly at night. His most serious coughing spells occur whenever he runs and plays.