The pattern continues

I pieced together a pattern that Luis has been getting a fever every month over the last four months approximately 1-2 weeks after his hospital chemo treatments. I raised this as a concern with his medical team over a month ago. About four weeks ago, he was taken off all at-home chemo following a fever. He went without it for about two weeks to allow his body to recuperate.

Since his last chemo appointment (approx 2 weeks ago), his at-home chemo medicine was changed to 50% dose to see how his body would respond. True to the pattern, he got a fever within a week of treatment. However, this time, his neutrophils were extremely high instead of extremely low. The explanation given for being so high is that it could have been due to the steroid he had received in the days prior. Chest and head x-rays were taken. Still no tumour in the chest, yay! The head x-rays revealed a sinus infection. He was given IV antibiotics for three days as an outpatient and his counts dropped back into the normal range. He was also put on antibiotics for 10 days at home.

The antibiotics have had one negative side effect, very loose stools. I had to bring him in to the hospital again to get looked over just in case there was something else causing it. The doctor believes the antibiotics were the problem and Luis' antibiotics were adjusted to ease the side effect.

His neutrophils are still at a good level. Because his neutrophils were at a good level, Luis' at-home chemo was adjusted to 75% of the regular dose. I'm not sure what this will mean for him going forward. We'll see how he does with the new dosing.

--Mommy