and you thought we were done with hospital admissions....

Yesterday around lunch time, Carter started feeling really sick.  He laid on the couch for about an hour then threw up.  I took his temp and it was 101.5.  So we packed up and headed to the hospital.  I was amazed at how fast he went down hill.  He's eaten a good breakfast in the morning, we'd gone for a bike ride, and all of a sudden he felt awful.  By the time we got in the clinic, his temp was up to 102.1 and he looked and felt really bad.  His ANC was 900 which is a little low considering he'd just finished 5 days of steroids.  His blood pressure was high, his pulse rate was high, and he was breathing fast.  They gave him fluids, antibiotics, and tylenol.  About 3 or 4 hours later he was feeling better but still had a fever.  They took a chest x-ray since he's got a nasty cough and his lungs are a little crackly - it looked fine.  Once they got the chemistry report back from his blood sample the numbers were considerably higher than they were just last week when we were in clinic.  It could be caused from a virus or maybe from his oral medication.  For the time being, he's not taking any oral meds.  He'll start back on them in a week or so.  He's been doing much better today.  No fever and in good spirits, all good signs.  So far his blood culture is clean and he's been without fever for more than 24 hours.  The doctors will probably keep him here until Monday or Tuesday just to keep an eye on him and make sure he keeps getting better.  It's harder than I thought it would be being back here in the inpatient unit.  But here we are and in isolation.  Thankfully, there's an xbox that can be brought in his room, lots of movies, and the Children's Cancer Association even rents out musical instruments to the kids here so he's got a keyboard to play with too.  The nurse's button is always close by and he's got them constantly bringing chocolate milk, string cheese, and gogurts.