Friday, May 13, 2011

Another Difficult Day

Jacob has just had two rough days in a row. As Kylene mentioned, Jacob threw up 6 times yesterday while I was at the hospital with him. This morning things seemed better at first: very little coughing and no vomiting, and he hadn't vomited at all while he was sleeping last night. Later today, however, the vomiting returned (4 times). He had a fever tonight before I left: 100.2° F (37.9° C), which is a mere 0.1° C (0.2° F) below what they consider to be a fever spike. When I spoke with the doctor on Thursday afternoon she said that if Jacob started spiking a fever it would be cause for concern and they would have to reevaluate his situation, so hopefully the main BMT doctors will take the fever into consideration when they discuss Jacob's situation in the morning. I just called the nurse, and she said that the fever has gone down and that the resident instructed her to only do further tests if his temperature reaches exactly 38.0° C or higher, as per their usual procedure.

Since the CT scan couldn't be done until Monday, Jacob had to get X-rays this morning to see if any problems could be identified before Monday. We don't know whether the doctor had a chance to analyze the X-rays yet, but I'll discuss it with the doctor in the morning.

Since Jacob's hemoglobin and hematocrit were low this morning, he received a blood transfusion.  Thanks again to all those who have donated blood or platelets, or have tried to donate, or have wished they could but live too far away. If you missed Kylene's mention of it a couple blog posts ago, she said that Jacob does not need platelets at this time, but he may still need blood. Little did we know that he would need blood again so soon—today!  If you have O+ blood, you can donate whole blood at Children's Hospital Los Angeles specifically for Jacob.  After scheduling a time to donate, please sign up on our calendar. Here's the link.

We have a lot of questions right now; I literally have over a dozen questions to ask the doctor in the morning. We don't even know for sure why Jacob has started coughing and vomiting. A couple of theories have been floated, but no definitive conclusions have been reached yet. Jacob is on an additional medication today and restarted another medication to hopefully help reduce vomiting, but both medications are more about controlling the symptoms rather than curing an underlying problem. Kylene and I are very concerned about Jacob's health right now, and we hope we get some answers soon (and that the problems are curable).

This is a very difficult time for all of us, so we humbly ask that you please keep Jacob and our family in your prayers. We greatly appreciate your love and support.

No comments: