Fever

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Unfortunately Judy developed another fever duirng the night. With a 2 AM trip to the UWMC came another stay at the hospital. The fever is not to bad but persist ant. With what happened last week we can't take any chances. She is just in a regular room taking some antibiotics and hydration. Yesterday her white cells were at 16,000 and falling, good things. This morning they were at 19,000, a sign of the immune system ramping up to fight something. All of her blood numbers are good and everything seems to be going quite well with the transplant itself. They just don't like to see the young immune system burdened with this especially since they can't find the source. They can't recall when someone went septic that they couldn't pinpoint the bacteria.
Since Judy has had so much trouble with the Hickman port and it could be the source. They are going to remove it tomorrow and replace it with a PICC line. If the doctors and the PICC nurse had communicated better it could have happened today. It will go near her elbow and up her arm to a big vein, can't remember what they called it. This line is much smaller and has a lower risk for infection. The Hickman is a large one to collect the original stem cells and it is no longer needed. We began to question it on Sunday when a observant nurse noticed a small piece of tissue sticking out the end of the clave, she removed it and found what we thought was a significant piece on the inside, the doctors weren't impressed and tossed it. It looked pretty big to us and almost plugged the pathway. Last week they had to TPA both of her lines because the red one would flush but not draw. That is a chemical that dissolves any clotting and stays in the line for two hours and they is sucked out then the Hickman flushed. The next day is when Judy started to fell tired and just layed around. It's possible that that event may have released the bacteria. They claim that bacteria like to adhere to plastic. Hickman is made of plastic. The guess is that the bacteria festered for about a day and got he upper hand when she went into septic shock. Another theory is it is possible that when they cultured, the bacteria may have already been dead because of her white cell counts being so strong . This seems to make sense. We hope that the replacement port solves this problem. If anybody deserves to get a break it is Judy. The time is now.