Fever and in hospital again -- and awful new port accessing kit!!!

Very similar to last time, stuffed nose and low grade fever.  ANC 470, which is very close to what it was a week ago and he didn't have any chemo last week.   His ANC needs to be above 750 before the next 4 weeks of chemo starts.  If he didn't have this fever (possibly cold again), his ANC would have been high enough and he was scheduled for lumbar puncture, CPM and Ara-C tomorrow.  They haven't canceled anything yet.  They will draw his CBC again tomorrow 4am to see if it would jump to above 750.

I don't mind delaying the start of next block for a few days or a full week.  The next 4 weeks are going to be gruesome and I'd rather him to be well above 750 rather than just made it to 750.  But protocol doesn't take account of what I think or feel.  Having my fingers crossed that ANC stay below 750 but fever begone tomorrow.  So we can go home soon and come back next Monday to see if ANC is above 750.

The doctor also feels his heart murmur worsened and ordered ECHO heart scan when his fever is gone.    Another thing to worry about, sigh!

Lucas has been eating well and active for the past week.  He eats a good portion of blueberry and baby spinach now -- a much needed addition to his rice-noodle-tofu-fish diet.

We had our worst day in terms of port accessing.  First access at ER needed to be taken out as soon as we get to 12th floor as there was a gap in the sticker covering (thus not sealed).  The nurse on 12th floor told us that they filed an incident report for the faulty execution by the ER nurse.   Then it got worse.  The hospital have just got a new version of port accessing kits.  It's the first time the nurses open up the new version -- they were making comments about how things are arranged differently now, how unthoughtful that one can't reach the hand sanitizer first.  As soon as the bridge sticker goes on, I knew the new one is not improved version.  The new bridge sticker is very stiff and doesn't stick well -- it just stands as a triangle instead of having two sides stick to skin nicely.  But then the big cover-up stickers -- they don't stick at all.  The nurses kept on putting more and bigger ones on top of each other.  After 5 minutes of 6 hands trying to hold the stickers down -- we finally gave up!  Tried to call the port charge nurse but she is not on the floor.  Got talk to the hospital central line charge nurse.  Since it's already his second time being accessed, and efforts were being made to keep it sealed, we would just change the stickers (sanitizing before putting on new stickers but no change of needle).  There's no old version of kits on this floor so one of the nurses went to 8th floor to get the old version, while the other nurse and I tried to keep Lucas in the same lying position he had been in.  The old kit finally came and thank God it worked as well as it always did.  By the time the whole ordeal ended, Lucas was held down in the position for a good half hour.  Both nurses's faces were red with sweats!  I think the nurses handled the unexpected situation well.  But I do wish they had tested the new kit before using it on a real patient!  Now the next time we get accessed, I will ask to see the package to make sure it's the old version!!!   For the other ALL parents out there, old version has green gloves and new version has beige gloves.