Well, all was going normal and it looked like there was going to be no complications with this round until Saturday. She woke up and complained about her mouth hurting. The doctor checked her mouth and found that she had mouth sores which are a result of the chemo. Also, her white blood counts that they use to determine if she has anyway of fighting an infection had dropped to zero which means that during this time she is highly suspectible to infection and if she gets one she has a tough time fighting it. Her red blood had also dropped so they gave her a blood transfusion. Later on that day her fever started to continually spike until it was 101.3. This sent a red alarm and the nurses quickly come in and draw blood cultures to check for infection and then they start her on some pretty strong antibiotics. Then the scary thing happened, she started shaking uncontrollably for about two hours and she was freezing to death. She was scared because she couldn't control it and she was shaking pretty bad. It looked like she was having a seizure but she wasn't. She was having what they call rigors. Her body was cold so it naturally shakes in order to try and warm itself up. Then about two hours later the shaking subsided and she was very hot. This was the highest point that her fever reached. This went on for about 8-10 hours until the antibiotics kicked in and by morning time she was a little weak but her fever had subsided. She had a fever only one other time and that was in the very beginning when she was very ill but she never had the rigors until this round. It's amazing how within an hour these kids can go from looking and feeling well to being very ill. So, I guess it is a really good thing that we are in the hospital for such long stays even though it's boring. On Sunday they took her down and did a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia. Fortunately, the chest x-ray came back normal. Each round takes a little bit longer for the counts to recover so we are hoping that in a week they will start to come up and she can go home for a few days until coming back. Her next round is called Intensification II which is 7 days of chemo. It will be tougher than this round because she will receive the high dose of chemo for two hours instead of one hour. She is also on a clinical trial and will be given the medicine Gemtuzumab in addition to the chemo.
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