At the ER

Well, not a lot of news to report for a long time, and now we have a lot of news all at once. As I write this we are sitting in the ER at Stanford. Last night we were at the ER at Dominican. Beckett is doing OK but he is sick and has a fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and some difficulty breathing. When I ask him how he feels, he says "I feel happy." I wonder if just thinks that is what you are supposed to say.

Last night we went to Dominican after the on-call oncology doctor at Stanford advised us to go in because of Beckett's temperature. After they assured us that they could handle Beckett's port, they had to fumble around with it for a long time to get it to work. They did a blood count and said that it looked good, took a blood culture (which isn't back yet), gave him some fluids and he perked up quite a bit.

He seemed worse today though, and his fever spiked up a bit to 102.4 or so. The on-call doctor tonight thought we should come in for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, so here we are. Also, you are supposed to apparently take a blood culture every 24 hours when someone with a port has a fever for more than a day, since there is some concern that the port site could become infected.

We will know more tomorrow. For right now everyone is fine, just very, very tired. On another front we are hopefully going to San Francisco on Tuesday to get a second opinion on Beckett's treatment. Dr. Fisher may very well have suggested the best option, but this is a complex decision because we are getting away from the standard treatment for this, and basically we have to choose from the best of several bad alternatives.