Day 20 - I need more cowbell

     Another day, another bout with fevers.  The increased frequency of the Lortab doses has masked his fevers.  Today we started to wean him off of the drug and noticed his fevers are still there.  The doctors decided it would be best to put him back on Amikacin, in addition to Zosyn, to try and eliminate the bacteria.  All of his blood work is still coming back positive with e-coli.  No results from the cultures for yeast.

Sleeping off a fever.

     Evan's MRI was completed this morning.  Again, the hospital staff did their best impression of Marines storming a compound.  With deadly efficiency they hurried Evan (and Cristy) off for sedation and imaging at 6:00.  The results came back this afternoon as irritation in the muscles of his legs.  I wasn't very excited with the responses I got from my questions about treatment and cause, but will be more determined tomorrow morning when the doctor caravan comes around.

Double IV lines.

     The stomach issues also still persist.  Evan has been given a laxative in hopes that emptying his colon of both air and fecal matter will help alleviate his discomfort.  His stomach looks extremely bloated and that alone is probably causing him some pain.  It looks like the plan is to continue with the anti-spasmatic and laxatives for now.
     Because his bacteria wasn't showing signs of being completely clear by Friday the Oncology team decided to move forward with his regularly scheduled chemo this afternoon.  He received a new IV line and Vincristine.  Steroids and Prevacid are also continuing as scheduled, which puts us on target still for our Induction end date.

Receiving his chemo treatment for today.

     If all goes according to plan he'll have two more rounds of Vincristine in this phase and one more spinal tap and bone marrow extraction.  The purpose of the latter is to confirm any traces of leukemia cells remaining.  One of the doctors reported Evan's hemoglobin and white blood cell counts were up since the leukemia wasn't crowding them out as much.
     Not necessarily the best day for him, but at least it was productive from a cancer elimination standpoint.  The teams still need to figure out how best to resolve the stomach and leg issues which have been an issue since day 1.

     For those of you not familiar with this blog entry's reference please enjoy this SNL skit from the 90s featuring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken.

SNL - I Need More Cowbell