More Diagnostic Tests

This fever is really stumping Alex's doctors. They already have him on broad spectrum antibiotics, and nothing is growing in his blood cultures. They recently put him on a broad spectrum anti-fungal regimen, yet the fever continues to spike in the afternoon.

So, it sounds like the team of doctors is considering doing a CT scan to see if they can see if there is a different type of fungus somewhere in his body, that is not responding to the medication.

They are switching to a different anti-fungal medication, since the one he is on currently, has adverse effects with the Vincristine he will get on Wednesday.

Alex is currently still asleep. His hemoglobin continues to drop (7.4 this morning), and his platelets are following suit (19). I'm sure another transfusion of one or both of those are in the cards for today or tomorrow. His ANC is slowly rising (38), but needs to be up over 200 AND he needs to be fever-free for 48 hours before we can get out of here.

The logistics are this:

1) He has not had a fever since last night - 48 hour time has started - earliest out is Wednesday.

2) His counts are only 38 - they need to be over 200 before they release him. Since the precursor "monocyte" cells are still at zero, the likelihood of a 200 count by Wednesday is unlikely.

3) Wednesday, he gets Vincristine and Daunorubicine, which will plummet his counts back to zero. Counts start to SLOWLY rise after 4-5 days - MAYBE reaching 200 on a Tuesday evening.

4) Repeat steps 1-3 until 48 hour no-fever condition coincides with a Tuesday with a count of 200+.

So, if his body goes into high gear today, creating a ton of neutrophils (the white cell count we are looking for), AND he doesn't spike his daily temperature, we MIGHT go home on Wednesday AFTER chemo - however, we are not counting on that scenario.

I will let everyone know what we find out when the CT scan is done - *sometime* today...