Things are Hard

I'll try to write a quick update on what's been happening with Andrew. His fever has gone down with the help of Tylenol every 4 hours, but it returns to 39.3 (around 103F) quickly without it. Andrew is having more and more trouble breathing. He has what is called third space, which means fluid accumulates in places it shouldn't. He's become very puffy, his abdominal cavity is pretty large, and he is starting to look like the michelin man we had back in round 1. His chest X-ray this morning was clear, but about an hour ago, it showed fluid accumulating in his lungs. This is not good news. We are borderline PICU at the moment, so we're hoping and praying things will turn up.

He's on Zosyn and Vancomycin (antibiotics for the infection), TPN & lipids (intravenous nutrition), benadryl, ondansetron (for nausea), dilaudid (for pain), Tylenol (for his fever and pain), maintenance fluids with dextrose, and his normal anti-fungal and anti-pneumonia medications (voriconazole & septra). We've had a few scares with low saturation and his lips turning blue, and he's also hyperventilated at 80+ breaths/minute, but he's with it enough to constantly push away the oxygen and even sit up in his crib occasionally.

I'm worried because we're only a week out from his last chemo, and it'll be at least another 3 or 4 days before his counts even begin to come up. In other words, he's still bottoming out. I've never seen him get over infections before he starts coming up pretty significantly.

Please pray for Andrew right now that he'll be able to clear the fluids and the infection, keep his fever down, and take deeper breaths. And Mom, he'll be okay, I'm sure, so don't freak out or anything.