When The Going Gets Tough

As the body awaits new stem cells to grow after the chemo and transplant, the immunity will continue to drop. At this point, the risk of developing an infection is high.

In this final cycle, the infection developed was more serious than the one from the previous cycle. Infection do cause blood pressures to fall, increased heart rate and fever to develop. In addition, the diarrhoea caused much loss of fluids and electrolytes.

With everything bundled together and having 8 rounds of diarrhoea through the night, the body went into shock on early Sat morning. He started to be irrational and tried pulling out his lines. When the nurse and myself stopped him, he clenched his fingers around ours as we tried to pry open his fingers to call for the doctor. By this time, his heart rate raced to 170 and fingernails turned slightly blue. My heart went cold when the mucus and saliva started to drip. The calmness of the nurse soothed his agitation and he slowly calmed down.

Soon it was 7am and his eyes again had the glassy look. His blood pressure was quite low so the doctor immediately sent him to the ICU. He was under close monitoring for 2 days as his heart rate was high at 140 - 160 and the fever also hit a high of 39 degrees on Sat night.

It was only on Mon morning that he was able to return to his normal isolation room. He was so weak from the entire ordeal that even talking needed effort.

A CT scan for the stomach was ordered to see exactly what is going on in the guts... it seems like there is some infection. A special milk-like drip was ordered for his nutrition. This drip goes directly into the body system and it need not be absorbed by the stomach. This enables his gut to rest and fully heal.

It was later in the afternoon that his pressure started to drop again. Once again, more doctors started to arrive and soon it became a mini-drama in his room. The doctors were nice as they kept me posted what was happening and kept assuring that everything will be fine.

For now, it is just close monitoring and allowing the antibiotics to do their wonders.