February 21, 2012

Sorry its been so long!  Guess where we are?...The hospital!  Go figure, huh?
It started at the end of last week.  Clayton started to act differently so we could tell his blood counts were dropping, leading us to his neutropenic phase.  So between work and that, we had our hands full.  The good news was that he wasn't spiking a fever so we were able to spend more time at home.  We had the meds we needed to help keep Clayton comfortable and he is always happier at home than in the hospital.  It was win, win.

Especially for the cat who has taken it upon himself to be Clayton's appointed guardian when he is home.  When Clayton is home, if he cries Otis (the cat) comes running to his side...literally.  He is never far away.

Alas, things happen the way things happen and our home health labs from Sunday morning showed that we need a platelet transfusion and maybe some blood.  Long story short, we came into the hospital for a definite platelet transfusion and got the added bonus of a blood transufsion (hopefully to save us from another visit) only to then find some blood in his diaper.  Oh yes.  For those of you just tuning in, nothing is simple around here.  Nothing.
So our little trip to get a transfusion shortly turned into a day-by-day trip to see what everyone had to say about the blood in his diaper (which appeared two more times).  Sunday turned to Monday and the Nephrologist's opinion, Monday turned to Tuesday and the Urologists opinion and each night seemed to bring the unexpected and midnight visits from residents dropping phrases like "acute renal failure".  Oh yes.  We heard that phrase Sunday and Monday night by two different residents who came into the room totally unprepared for two different situations and proceeded to give me a heart attack.  Don't freak out.  There is no renal failure acute or otherwise, it was simply the negligence of two residents that lead them to that possibility.  Had they taken a minute to read his chart or look at his labs, they would have seen his kidney function was AMAZING!  Anyhow, back to the blood in the diaper...the consensus?

Low Platelets!

Yep.  A 48 hours hospital stay and two specialists brought us full circle back to platelets.  Tricky little boogers!
Then there was today.  Clayton spiked a "questionable" fever (today's nurse and I have a disagreement on this subject).  Here is the thing about fevers when cancer is involved:  if a temperature of 100.4 is reported then a minimum 72 hour hospital stay will definitely follow.  So now it's Tuesday night and we are expecting to be here until Friday afternoon.  However, through the chaos there was a some refreshing news.  We did an ultrasound this morning just to check in on the kidney and snuck a peak at the tumor.  For the first time we got to compare the tumor now to where we started.

It's shrunk!

Woot! Woot!  Keeping in mind that it was just an ultrasound and the MRI, CT and MIBG we'll do before surgery will tell us the most, today was the first time we've had any idea how the main tumor mass might be reacting to the chemo.  Off to bed, more tomorrow!