Compromised Immune Systems

I mentioned before, the unexpected hospital stays and the stress that goes along with that.  When on chemo, or at least on the hyper cvad regimen, one is sent home with normal counts with the expectation that during the homestay the immune system will completely crash.  Along with that goes all of the counts, platelets and hemoglobin included.

The worst part is, you can lysol your house until there isn't a single 1/8 inch left untouched by sanitzer... you can stick the person in a bubble, have zero visitors, follow the neutropenic diet to a T and as it turns out, the person is a threat to themselves. 

September 2nd my husband was admitted into the hospital, spent time in the ICU, had brain scans, abdomen scans... you name it-they did it.  He had e.coli... and not from something he ate, but the e. coli that is normally in a human person's body.  It got into his blood stream with his counts being low, etc. and once it was in there, he didn't have immunity to fight it off.  It was one of the most frightful times in my entire life as we waited for those blood cultures to grow and tell us why six bags of blood couldn't raise his hemoglobin levels and why the antibiotics weren't working to reduce his fever... it was terrifying.

This past Saturday his fever spiked again.  Home again after having his "even cycle" chemo (which is what he had before his previous e.coli infection), he began with stomach pain and a slowly creeping fever.  We waited for it to hit 100F and we called the oncologist and were sent to the ER, for about 6pm.  By midnight he was up to 103.9F, they had him on ice packs, antibiotics, tylenol to help with the fever... it wasn't working.  He was low on blood and platelets (coming in with a 0.1 white blood cell count, 7.4 hemoglobin and 13 for platelets), but they couldn't give him any due risk of a reaction, until his fever was less than 100F.  After a long night of contemplating an ICU stay, the nurses on the phone with the doctor, lots of blood draws, fluids, and meds... at 6am his fever made it into the 99 range and they got him the blood and platelets.  

Yesterday, his fever stayed at a low grade fever in the 99 range and with a couple more bags of blood and more antibiotics, this morning he registered in the normal 98F range.  He has remained stable all day.  Cultures came back and showed a gram-positive bacterial infection... which could be e.coli again.  The nurse said that more often than not, these secondary infections are caused by some bacterial/fungal agent that is normally present within or on the body, but with compromised immune systems they aren't kept at bay and over run the body.  Fantastic. 

Here we are, wondering what it is this time, hoping that it could give us some sort of insight as to how we could avoid this situation next time... and they tell us that the patient's own body is usually the culprit to their secondary infections. And here I was blaming myself and wondering if I prepared food incorrectly. 

In any case, I'm very relieved to see my husband is doing better.  This only makes me look forward to the "even" round next time, not.

Currently he's down having his bone marrow biopsy to check for possible residual leukemia.  Crossing all of my fingers and toes that it comes back clear, we need a win.  Good news, hoping for good news.