New Year's Eve at the hospital

With 1 week away from Olivia's last chemo (oral chemo), she develops a fever and gets to spend New Year's eve at the hospital.

The day started out so well for her. She even took a long nap in the afternoon so she has energy for the long night. She was having fun at our New Year's eve party until she didn't feel well. Turns out she had a fever and so we had to take her to the ER.  At 9pm, we hurried to the hospital to get her blood counts checked. We were hoping that we will be sent home because in her last episode of fever, her counts were normal and we were sent home after 1 dose of antibiotics. We wanted to do the countdown at home with the rest of the family. Unfortunately, it turned out her ANC went down to 340. It's crazy how her counts from 1 week ago was an ANC of 4,000+, and it plummeted to 340. It's been about 3 weeks since she is back to 100% dosage of her oral chemo. We already saw this pattern a few months ago that her counts drop once she is at 100% dosage. Prior to June when the somewhat regular hospitalization started, she was able to handle 125% dosage of chemo for months! The doctors advised to switch one of her meds (bactrim to pentamidine) thinking that it is what's causing her counts to drop on top of the chemo that naturally drops blood counts. I think it partially helps but I also think her body just really can't handle the full dose anymore.

Olivia was so upset to know that she had to be admitted again. She kept crying and wished she would go home instead. The good thing is that her HGB is at 8.9 so she didn't need to get any blood transfusion this time. But because she had a fever and ANC is low, she had to start antibiotics today and is on chemo hold again. I don't even know if she will still get any more chemo since her protocol has a hard stop on Jan 9. She was able to catch up on sleep today which made her feel a bit better. She is hoping to not have any fever tonight so she'll be able to go to the playroom tomorrow. She needs to be 24 hours fever free before she can go there.

It was not exactly how we planned to ring in the new year, but as long as Olivia is ok, I won't complain. I always tell myself "it could be worse". Everyday is a blessing!

She will get blood counts again at 4 am. More updates in the morning.