Dangerous Times

The boy continues to recover. But he's bored of being stuck in a cubicle. This is going to make keeping him amused harder and harder.

The boy has been stuck in the cubicle for three days. He's feeling a bit better and starting to go a bit stir crazy. He's desperate to go out and play in the little car that he knows is on the ward. Up to now he has accepted that he cannot go out until the doctors say it is ok to do so. This may not hold much longer.

Unfortunately, the doctors are unlikely to say that it is ok for him to leave the cubicle. His blood results from yesterday were a mixed bag. Showed that his CRP is down (infection marker) and they haven't yet re-grown the bug that they found previously. But they also showed that he is now neutropenic again (no immunity). Has happened very quickly. A combination of the chemo and the infection destroying his immunity faster than last time he had this chemo.

The antibiotics affect his digestion and make him poo more often than normal. Combined with him scrambling round the bed makes for accidents. The wife had a bad one yesterday. Mess all over the bed, all over his legs and almost none in the nappy. Given he can re-infect himself in this way, she bathed him (below).

His boredom and frustration led to a very nasty trachy tape change last night. He was tired, wanted to go out and was thrashing around while we changes his tapes. Kept grabbing my hand which was holding the trachy. Almost pulled it off. All three of us got angry (rather unhelpfully), with me and the wife shouting at him to calm down (not very sensibly) and him shouting no all the time. As soon as it was finished, I scooped him up for a cuddle and he calmed immediately. A very stressful experience.