Fever and Loss

You never know what you're going to get when you come and visit Hans' page. I never know what to expect, I just try to keep up! Hans had a very successful three big days of school and he seemed pretty wiped out in the afternoons. I just thought -"We'll aren't I smart to put him in school just a half day, it wears him out and it's just right for him." Well, Wednesday night my alarm went off when he said he was chilly, wrapped up in a blankie and fell promptly to sleep at 8:20. I thought - here we go... By 10:00 he was spiking a fever and we had the Hemonc on call telling us to visit our local ER. (Hans still has his Port, and his risk of a line infection is what brings us instantly to the ER after a fever exceeds 101.0.) It was an all-nighter at the ER... we got some fluids, some IV antibiotics, we learned his ears and throat looked good, but his Potassium came back pretty low (at 2.6). Yikes! We were discharged at 7:00am and sent home.

I called our clinic at 8:20 am. By 8:30 they had called me back saying they needed to see Hans. So we packed him up and headed in to clinic. Kevin was able to take the day off to join us, so it was really easy duty for me! The clinic has a triage system that is truly exceptional. If you have to get a fever, it's ideal to get it between 8 and 10 am so that your chance of getting one of the few rooms is best. You get a comfy private room, right on the 14th floor, a dedicated nurse and an actual Hemonc doc. After yesterday I realize it is just health care at its best for Hans. They ran another Potassium and it already came back up to 3.3 (low, but closer to normal) after a supplement and a steroids adjustment. We continued to get negative A/B flu results, but we are still waiting for swine and blood cultures.

We'll go back in today for another dose of IV antibiotics and more labs. Hoping to see that Potassium level off! And, hoping for an ER-free weekend. We'll just have to see how that plays out.

As I arrived at the ER on Wednesday night, I found out from Kevin that his remaining Grandpa, "gramps", Leonard Weberling, had just lost his long standing battle with Prostate Cancer. Gramps was just about the coolest sweetest oldster you could meet. He was the town barber in Snohomish Washington all his life, and then started a small barber shop in his retirement in Desert Aire, WA and worked late into this summer. We are so happy that 3 of us got to see him once again this summer. Gramps gave Hans his first ever haircut back in 2006. He was proud to get to do that special job of taming the unmanageable blond curls of his great grandson! I'm just kind of a hippie about hair and I hated to cut his golden curls. My laptop is down right now, or I'd post some pictures of our fun adventure.