Will it ever end?

It's been quite a weekend. Joshua was finally discharged on Friday morning. We were told that even though his creatinine levels had come back down, because of how much chemo this kid has had, we are going to go through with a GFR test. Basically, they will inject dye into Joshua's port and then do blood draws over a certain period. This test will give us an answer as to how well his kidneys are functioning. After 3 years of chemo there is a good chance that they have been affected in some way.

So, we get home on Friday only to have Joshua's temperature start to rise by Friday evening. He didn't get to the fever point but he was hovering around 99. For Joshua, that is high because he's usually well below 98.6. Jeff and I watched him like a hawk all night. That watching continued as did the temp until I finally called up to Hopkins on Saturday evening. The doctors felt that since he was still active and playing and he didn't have that 101.4 temp, that we could stay home and see what happened. Did I happen to mention that while we were in on Thursday, Joshua started with a cough once again. This cough has progressed by this point and he is now hoarse as well. So, for the second night in a row, we watched the little man closely. He got really sweaty around 10 pm and stayed cool all night. I thought that his body had finally kicked that temp and we were in the clear. WRONG. First thing this morning, Joshua's temp went to 101.8 and we were on our way to our home away from home. I swear I sleep more on the pull out couch at Hopkins than I do in my own bed.

Well, once Jeff got Joshua to the Hopkins ER, they did yet another chest x-ray and started antibiotics. His blood pressure dipped a little and they added yet a second antibiotic. I will note that his creatitine levels were back to normal today so that is promising on that part. His ANC was 1700 when we were admitted on Tuesday. The chemo he got shouldn't have dropped it much and not by this point anyway, but today his ANC was 240.

So here we are. We're in again with no idea of when we'll get out. I swear I'm sending my next mortgage payment to Johns Hopkins rather than the bank!