The Trip Ended Unexpectedly

We came home early from Boston after spending far too much of last night in another hospital. Katie spiked a fever just after dinner and we ended up in the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital until almost 2 o'clock this morning. However, before that all started we had a lot of fun.

We got on the road early in the morning and headed for Boston. The trip was uneventful and relatively quick. We dropped our car off at the hotel and quickly jumped onto the nearest subway without bothering to check in. We were running late. Josh and Katie love trains and subways and they had a great time riding the subway and switching trains at the stations. A short walk from our last subway stop put us right at Fenway Park where the kids desperately wanted to sample the ball park food. We settled into our seats fully prepared with four hotdogs, a couple of drinks to share between us, and a pretzel that Josh decided that he needed with his hotdog. We were there for a double header, but the first game lasted twelve innings and that was about all that the kids could take, so we headed out after the first game. We walked around a little bit and then headed for the subway again. It was after four and we were starting to feel the need for something to eat other than a hotdog. We had previously decided on sea food, so we headed back toward the hotel where we knew we would find a Legal Seafood nearby. Katie was just about asleep by the time we arrived, but she hadn't eaten in a few hours and we didn't want her blood sugar to drop if she fell asleep so we went right into the restaurant and ordered our food. She fell asleep before it arrived... She did manage to wake up part-way through dinner and have a little something to eat. It was enough to make us happy, so we decided to head back to the hotel for an after dinner siesta and then go back out on the town later in the evening.

It didn't quite happen that way. When we got back to the hotel and I picked Katie up out of her stroller, I noticed that she was warmer than usual. And of course, we forgot to bring along our thermometer. Amy headed went to the closest store to get one, the closest store required a subway ride, and when she returned we discovered that Katie's temperature was 101.9. 101 is the trigger for an immediate trip to the emergency room. We were pretty distraught to discover that she had a fever, but there wasn't much we could do about it other than call Fletcher Allen and speak to her doctors. So that is what we did. We made arrangements with Katie's doctor to call Mass General ahead of us and fill them in on Katie's history and then we loaded her back onto the subway and headed to the hospital. By this time, it was 8pm, bedtime. She never gets a fever in the morning when sleep deprivation wouldn't be an issue. It's always at night. Anyway, a fever with a high enough ANC wouldn't be a big problem, but we knew her ANC would be dropping and we weren't sure how much wiggle room we had. As it turns out, we didn't have much wiggle room at all. Her ANC last night was just 504. Anything less than 500 and we would still be there. Just this past Thursday her ANC had been 1270. We thought she was in better shape than she actually was and we put her in a precarious position because of it. Below 500, she isn't allowed to be around a lot of people or in strange places and we had her on a standing room only subway full of people headed to Fenway Park!

The tests at the hospital took a while, and then antibiotics were delivered through her port just in case and then we were finally allowed to leave. We finally got back to our hotel around 2am this morning and we all just collapsed into bed. When we got up this morning, we scrapped the rest of our plans, loaded everything back into the car and came home. I am disappointed that we didn't get to take the kids to the aquarium and the children’s' museum and the duck boat tours that we were planning on today, but at least they both got to go to Fenway Park for the first time and see a baseball game and have a whole slew of other experiences that they don't usually get to have. We all had fun doing the thing we got to do and now Amy and I are both relieved to be home where we know Katie is a little safer and her team of doctors is a little closer.