Andrew has had a couple of terrible nights lately. You wouldn't know it, since he's such a good kid during the day. It's been the same thing every night--the night nurses offer to hold him for me in the middle of the night, then about 20 minutes after his midnight vitals, they run out of ideas and hand him off to me. At one point, he would only quiet down when he was in the crook of my arm for a 3-hour stretch. I'm running out of ideas, too. The nurses keep asking me, is he in pain? I don't think so--why would he only be in pain at night? One of the fifty or so handouts they give you called "Assessing your Child's Pain" partially defines pain for infants as inconsolability. He is totally consolable when I nurse him so... I really have no idea. They offered to give him a narcotic for pain, but we settled on an anti-emetic that has a sedative effect. Geesh.
At this point, we're staying in the hospital because Andrew's immune system is so compromised. He's really only getting Ondansetron and Benadryl for nausea. I'm hoping to help as much as possible by giving him the lactoferrin, lysozyme, CCL28, and all those good IgA dimers that are in milk. It's gotta help at least somewhat in preventing infection. Hearing about cancer patients who have died from opportunistic infections has made us paranoid, so until his ANC (absolute neutrophil count) is up, we're saying no visitors in the room at this point. His bone marrow is functioning and making leukocytes, just not the neutrophils we need to go home.
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