Tired

Long night last night. Carter's in the middle of Delayed Intensification. (Head to my photography blog to see details on that.) He's been doing amazingly well. He should be puking his brains out and while he doesn't feel fabulous, he's not throwing up. YAY! Last night when he was heading to bed he felt particularly nasty. He went to sleep at 7:00, garbage can in hand ready to vomit... whimpering. Poor guy. At 10:00 Bryan and I were in the family room and we heard him crying. He was in our bathroom going potty and on FIRE. His temp was 104. Again, poor guy. So, we called the oncologist who told us to head to the ER. Bummer.

The nice thing about him having cancer is that when Carter and I got there they knew he was coming (thank you to the oncologist for calling) and we didn't even sit down. We headed back to Carter's room and he went back to sleep. He still had a fever, though it was a little lower at this point. When he gets a fever we aren't allowed to give him anything to treat it until they get his blood counts and give us the okay. They want to see what the fever will do on it's own. It wasn't until I asked the nurse a few times at 1:00am for Tylenol that we actually got one. (Poor ER nurses. They are going a million directions at one time.)

By the time they finally accessed his port he was no longer numb from the numbing cream I had put on him. They missed his port the first time (they did this last time we were in the ER) so they had to poke him twice... at 12:30am... while he wasn't even numb. He was NOT entertained. But, we finally got his counts. They were really high, which is GREAT! What that means is that his body sensed the sickness (whatever it may be, we still don't know) and his white blood cells went crazy multiplying trying to fight it off. This is great! They pumped him full of some pricey, super strong antibiotics and by 3am we were back in our own beds at home.

It was a long, looong night but it was good to hear that his body's doing what it should be doing. His fever is all but gone this morning and we are heading into the oncology clinic in a few hours to get some more of the antibiotic. Poor kid. He had been de-accessed for a grand total of 12 hours before they poked him again. We had de-accessed him at home yesterday morning (that means that we took the poke out of his port) after we had given him his dose of chemo at home. But, as always, he took it in stride, slept in this morning, and hasn't complained even once. Amazing.

Here's a picture I took at the hospital on my iPhone last night. He looks so darn tired... :(