Monday 7th March 2011

Luke appears to be getting better today. Unfortunately over the weekend he kept getting temperatures on and off, more so in the evening. Each time he gets a fever it delays his coming home. So far today he has maintained a normal temperature, so hopefully he's turned the corner.
Murray is feeling better today so he came in and took over from me at lunchtime. This afternoon they had a visit from the infectious diseases unit. Each day Luke has had having blood cultures taken.This means the blood samples are taken to the infectious disease unit and see what bacteria grows in the samples. We were told over the weekend that it appeared that the central line that was taken out was infected. The doctor this afternoon told the boys that it wasn't actually the central line (or equipment/needle of the line) that grew anything. What grew was actually in the blood sample that was taken from the line. However they don't believe the bug thats grown was causing the fevers. They actually think the fevers were caused by the antibiotics that he was being treated with. They have stopped one of the antibiotics and are running further tests. They were going to do an ultrasound on Luke's stomach to see if any infectious bugs are in there (as he has had some stomach pain).
So the long and the short of it is that no-one has any idea!!!!
Luke needed a new cannula put in his hand this afternoon (they are only viable for a few days). Two nurses attempted 4 times without success and then someone came and tried in another vein on his hand. Unfortunately he is turning into a pin cushion with all of the cannula attempts and blood samples being taken. At least the old central line was good for something!

As I mentioned before Luke needs to have a 24 hour period without any fevers followed by another 24 hours taking oral antibiotics which means at least Wednesday / Thursday before he comes out. However given that there are still some complications that might not happen. Also Luke was due to have his ingrown toenail operated on by a private podiatrist today. Obviously that didn't go ahead. However one of Luke's doctors used to be a podiatrist in her past life and she was going to get the general surgeons to come and have a look both big toes (as his other one has started bleeding down one side since being in hospital) and hopefully they can get them sorted before the next round of chemo starts.

Luke is due to go onto maintenance chemo and they think tentatively this may start next Tuesday. Needless to say with finishing intensive chemo about 10 days ago and being neutropenic and now this, Luke has not felt like doing any university work. He is really hoping that he can pick this up again soon. We have already applied for a few extensions on his first assessment items so I hope he can catch up.
Things should get easier for him once he is over this glitch in the program.
I'll let you know when we have any other news.