A small step backwards

Carter slept a lot today, which was much needed. In the early afternoon, he threw up a few times and when the nurse came in to help us, she took his temperature. Almost 103. Bummer. Anytime someone going through chemotherapy gets a fever they are very careful about it. The risk of infection is so great and the complications that can come from an infection are pretty scary. Carter's immune system in seriously weak right now. Since this first round of chemo is so intense, his immune system will be at it's weakest point this week. Throughout treatment, it will fluctuate but this should be the lowest point it will reach. So, since a fever can be a sign of infection, they took some blood to do cultures and will keep him on the same antibiotic that he's been on until the blood cultures come back in 48 hours. The original plan of coming home today has been changed but that's ok. I'm glad it happened when it did instead of right before we were planning on leaving or, worse still, right after we got home. The nurses and doctors were not surprised that he got this fever and they told us it's completely expected. But, they still have to be very careful about it. After they took blood for his cultures, they were able to give him some tylenol. He went back to sleep and when he woke up, he was ready to go play again. When I left the hospital last night, he had just completed about 25 laps around the unit on the tricycle (with an exhausted father trying to keep up) and was back in the play room painting. Hopefully the fever will stay down and we can leave tomorrow.
Today he will get another chemotherapy drug which has to be given as a shot in the leg. I'm not looking forward to that. But he's being so brave through all of this. There's one medicine that he has to take twice a day every day for the first 29 days. It's an oral medicine and it tastes really bad. I think it was yesterday, or maybe the day before (all the days are running together in my head) he tried to give it to himself (it's just in a little syringe) but ended up spitting it out. So we had to give it to him again and he was fighting us but he swallowed it. When it was time for his next dose, he wanted to do it himself again but Dennison reminded him of when he did it himself and spit it out. He told Dennison, "oh yeah, maybe you should do it." So he did and Carter was so brave about it. The next dose, we let him do it himself and he just did it fast and then hurried and took his other medicine that tastes better. We were so proud of him! He hates taking that medicine but he just does it. What an amazing little boy we have. So now he takes his medicines by himself. So brave. We just love Carter so much.