Fever! – Saturday, December 26, 2015

On December 27, 2015 by Michelle Love

Saturday, December 26, 2015…37 days in the hospital

BJ is still having fevers spike every few hours. He’s back on oxygen at 2 liters. He was complaining of a headache last night, and this morning’s labs showed his hemoglobin at 7, so he received a 2-unit blood transfusion today. He’s also getting a unit of platelets tonight. His feet seem to be marginally better. He’s still fighting off nausea too, and it seems that when his fever spikes, so does the nausea. He was switched from Zofran to Kytril yesterday, but Kytril didn’t work for him. He’s back to scheduled Zofran for nausea. We need his nausea to get under control so he can eat. He is hungry, but with nausea, the absence of taste buds, and the fact that he hasn’t really eaten anything substantial in over a month is a real challenge to finding something that he wants to eat. Right now, the magic combination is Lance’s Cream Cheese and Chives crackers with Lemon-lime Gatorade. The awesome staff (Lamika!) in Food and Nutrition here at LCH will get most anything that BJ wants to eat, but those crackers are just special enough that the hospital doesn’t have them.

A physical therapist came to work with BJ today. He did a great job tolerating the muscle stretches and is very motivated to work with them. He has lost a lot of weight, and is not happy seeing how thin his legs are now. I believe he’s all set on having his team of SEALs help him get back in shape when he’s ready.

Hoping for a great night, full of sleep and no fevers!