Anna is still in hospital and will be for at least another week, unless there is a dramatic improvement. Peter and I alternate staying nights and weekend days, and I cover most of the week days. It is a constant challenge to look after Anna in hospital and Nathan at home, managed with a huge amount of help from lots of you…
Anna’s temperature continues to be extremely high, as you can see below in her temperature and heart rate charts for the past few days. The temperature is the top chart in the pictures and heart rate is the bottom one. Normal body temperature is around 37 degrees (you can see a black line for this on the chart) and anything above 38 degrees is fever or pyrexial. The black dot in the vertical axis of the temperature chart is 38.5 degrees.
You can see the dips on the chart when she is given paracetamol. Her temperature dips for several hours until it wears off, then goes straight back up again. A lot of her temperatures are recorded at 40.4 because that is the highest that the tempa dot strips go up to. It is probably higher than that. Her last temperature was 40.4 on the strips but 41.2 on the tempanic (ear) thermometer.
Her blood counts are very, very low. Haemoglobin is still around 70 so she has had another blood transfusion. Her platelets and neutrophils are almost zero, and white blood counts around 20.
The medical team are still working to find the cause of the infection but have also considered that the fever and accompanying shakes could be a side effect of one of her (many) drugs. The anti fungal drug she was taking, ambisome, can cause fever and shakes so that has been replaced by another antifungal. She is on several intravenous antibiotics, some specifically for respiratory infections and some more broad spectrum. She is also on drugs to maintain her potassium levels, which had been low, multi vitamin/minerals, and a range of others on demand to address either pain (codeine) or any side effects from the others (eg ondansetron for anti sickness).
She is still quite unwell but not causing the same kind of concern as last weekend. However, it is clearly not good for anyone to have such a high temperature for such a long time, especially a 4yr old girl.
As well as continuing to search for the source of infection, the medical team are now also trying to identify the anticipated progress of the infection. If there is no change, she will have another general anaesthetic on Wednesday and a bone marrow biopsy. The biopsy should show if her blood levels are due to improve or not. Of course, they will add in any other procedures while she is under a GA such as taking a sample of the fluid from the still unidentified lump in her neck and fitting her splints.
The splints are to avoid contracture in her feet. Because she is using her feet and legs so little, there is a very real danger that her ankle muscles will shorten and become resistant to any stretching. So she may regain strength sometime in the future but her feet wouldnt work. She has had splints cast, which she did not enjoy, and it would be easier just to put them on her while asleep.
Anna didn’t want any photos taken for the blog today (she really is feeling rubbish) so I’ve put some in from before her leukaemia diagnosis.
anna's blog 