More and more tests

There's so much to update, but the quick update is that Andrew is on a high-flow nasal cannula that has significantly helped his respirations decrease from around 100 to 70-80 per minute. Apparently 30-40% of AML patients get a Strep infection, and infectious disease tells us that he hasn't heard about any other organism in that first blood culture, so it may just be a single organism after all. It's possible that Viridian strep is causing pneumonia and the persistent fevers, but it's less likely they are causing the red spots on his arms and legs. Because of this, we're seeing the dermatology people and he got a pretty traumatic biopsy this morning. I think he finally may be developing a fear of doctors now.

Things are still touch and go, but we know we're in the right place. He's still breathing with a lot of effort, holding his breath, then catching up, but things go so much better when he's sleeping.

By the way, Andrew's famous! I'm almost positive he was the first patient in the PICU to receive intravenous tylenol (the drug I was complaining we didn't have in Round 3). It's been really nice because as of today, he won't keep anything down at all, and we really need to control his fevers.

They're challenging him with the oxygen coverage so he has to work for his air. Over-oxygenating for a few days will actually cause scar tissue in the alveoli and sometimes can increase the free-radicals in his body. He was on 100% oxygen all night long, so... sigh.

This should all be under control when his counts come up, but so far, we've seen no signs of life. His white count is still at .1 (normal is 5-17), so we're hoping the neupogen does its job.

I just went out to round with everybody. Sounds like we'll be here for at least a few days. Thanks so much for thinking of us right now. We really appreciate the love and prayers.