About Me

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Bakersfield, CA, United States
Hans was a busy, happy, sweet and fearless three year old when he was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma. He fought his disease like a "gladiator" for nearly 6 years. Hans was an animal lover to his core. He was 'guarded' at home by his three cats, Black, Orange and Cotton. He also had his Golden Retriever, Honey, to keep him company. Hans enjoyed swimming, biking, gardening, grilling (he had his very own grill!), horseback riding, playing video games, building Legos, and flipping between Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Animal Planet. Hans loved all members of his family and he was a loyal friend. He had to go through a lot of treatment in his life. But Hans powered through it. His attitude was let's get this done! His motivation was always to get back home, to his family, pets, favorite foods and pool.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

From the 7th Floor!?!

Good morning,
I am posting today from the Seventh Floor. We don't know if there is something significant going on with Hans that we are not catching, or if he just has had a rough October, but we woke up yesterday and Hans felt warm. He was actually 101.9 - so a trip to the TCH ER ensued. For a moment there, after a chest xray, they thought Hans had a touch of pneumonia, but the radiologist disagreed. The big concerns yesterday were fever and a lower-than-normal BP. I actually wasn't too worried about Hans' BP - seems like normal for him is something like 85/50. It was lower yesterday and the ER docs wanted him on monitors. The stinky thing about that meant that when were admitted we couldn't be placed on our home-away-from-home 9th floor, and had to be placed on 7. 7 is the Progressive Care Unit, a step-down unit from the ICU. It didn't really make that much sense to us b/c Hans hasn't really seemed that sick... But, 24 hours later, Hans has had 6 doses IV antibiotics for a possible bacterial infection, started Tamiflu for a possible Flu (we are waiting on labs), he has had non-stop IV fluids running and he actually hasn't had fever since we got admitted.

I'm not sure how long we'll be here - we are just along for the ride. We sort of surrender to the fever and all of these happenings. Kevin and I are hanging out with Hans here, and our lovely friend and neighbor Michelle, graciously opened her doors to Elle at 6am yesterday so that she could be taken in for a normal weekend. It's hard in our situation to be so far away from our loving extended family, but it is nice to have friends that will open their doors to us in a moment's notice.

We'll keep you posted. I wouldn't be surprised if they discharged us today, but at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept us another night. Hans seems to doing fine though! No fever, he is sitting up in bed, playing, talking and eating. I have a theory that when he is sick and has fever, his Adrenal Insufficiency complicates things, he gets a little dehydrated and his chemistries get out of whack, and the best thing we can do for him is sit on him and give him fluids. I just hope that whenever we do go home he stays well! They haven't found an underlying cause, and they don't have any idea if yesterday's fever was linked to or separate from last Wednesday night's fever.

Thanks for checking up on us...Lara

2 comments:

Kim Tyler said...

Keeping my fingers crossed that this is just a small blip with no significance, and that you are all home and in good health very soon. Love as always, Kim

The Adkins Family said...

Emma has been sick for 2 weeks with on and off again high fevers. There's so much going around...

We are thinking of Hans and all of you guys! Let us know if we can ever offer any help, even at a moment's notice!