Hard Day

 Today has been a hard day. Tony is feeling really awful. He stopped using his phone completely yesterday, so I made several phone calls to his nurse throughout the night the check on him. He is still having some unexplained fevers. Thanks to some wonderful friends that took the boys last minute, I was able to come up to the hospital pretty early this morning. I got here just in time to talk to the doctor. They are testing him for a few bacteria's and virus's, but he also said the fevers could just be caused by the extreme amount of chemo he has had to endure. They decided to do a chest x-ray this morning. Fortunately, they were able to bring the machine to him instead of the other way around. 

The X-ray showed that there is some fluid in both his lungs, and the left side has partially collapsed. We've been told this is fairly common during extreme chemo treatment, because as your blood counts bottom out, you get less oxygen circulating, making it difficult to even stand. So laying down for 36 hours, and breathing shallowly because of the pain he is in caused his lung to partially collapse. 

He's severely neutropenic now, which makes him especially at risk for catching virus's so he is in a special room. You have to enter one room, and put on a blue robe with wrist cuffs, and sanitize your hands, and then you enter his pressurized room. 

They have had to give him platelets, a blood transfusion and several infusions of potassium today. He is having difficulty eating and has barely managed a few pieces of toast. Please keep the prayers flowing. He is in need of all of it today. We're hoping there will only be a few more of these extremely hard days and then his counts should come back up.