On Thursday, September 17, Aiden suddenly produced a fever of 102.3 while my mom was with him. The nurses performed the normal procedure when a fever is discovered of drawing cultures and administering Tylenol. We have Aiden on IV Tylenol, so it gets into his system even quicker than oral Tylenol. Still, whenever he spikes a fever I become concerned, so I headed up to the hospital in the afternoon to be with him. By the time I arrived and my mom walked out the door, it has been about 4 hours since the Tylenol had been administered. Not 10 seconds after my mom left, Aiden began shaking and seemed hot once again. Aiden has never been one to shake during a fever, so this alarmed me immediately. I called the nurse in to get a temp on him and not only had his fever returned, but his heart rate was more elevated than what they would have liked. It was at this point that things started to roll quickly and become more worrying. The doctors decided they wanted a COVID & viral panel test done, and Aiden was hooked up to more fluids, as he had started refusing to eat. We administered Tylenol once again, and a parade of doctors began coming through our door. The hospital manager (someone who oversees every floor), the on duty oncologist, the resident, and an ICU doctors all paid us a visit. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was the presence of the ICU doctor that made me very worried. They were trying to assess whether or not Aiden needed to be moved to the ICU, ultimately deciding he could stay on the 9th floor. 

Andrew & I decided we needed to be together as a family, so my sweet sister Emma volunteered to stay the night with Jax so we could make that happen. Aiden struggled to sleep, and only 2 hours after his second dose of Tylenol, was shaking and in extreme discomfort. Once again we called the nurses, and his fever had now reached a high of 104.5. It was at that point I started to cry. Aiden was in a state of discomfort that I had never witnessed before, and the fear that something was really wrong was growing by the minute in our hearts. Once again, the ICU docs paid us a visit, and we gave yet another early dose of Tylenol. Thankfully, the doctors did not think Aiden needed to be moved, so we stayed put in our familiar room. The virus panels and COVId test had come back negative on all counts, which was certainly of some comfort. Andrew & I passed the night comforting Aiden and trying to get him to sleep. Though we hated to put more medicine in him, we eventually decided he needed Benadryl to help him sleep, which it did. Sometime in the early morning his fever finally broke. I spend Wednesday’s and Friday’s with Aiden this round, so mercifully I was scheduled to be with him the following day anyways. Aiden and I passed a quiet and restful Friday with lots of snuggles and some Little Einstein episodes to cheer him up. Aiden didn’t fully recover from that terrifying episode until Sunday when his appetite and cheerful mood returned. He has not had any fevers since then, praise be to God!

Though this round has presented many challenges, Aiden has continued with his therapies each week, and this round led to a very fun accomplishment: crawling! We have been working on crawling since the beginning of the year, and though Aiden’s core had strengthened in that time, he seemed either unwilling or unable to take to crawling. Some of it was certainly stubbornness, as he found he could get places by a combination of turning on his butt and rolling. On September 21st, Aiden decided he wanted to start crawling - so he did. That very week, PT had told me that we really needed to work on his hip muscles, as they are fairly weak and he was unlikely to master crawling until we strengthened them. Now, Aiden is not yet a crawling fiend by any means, and he does still need to strengthen those muscles, but I swear he heard that and thought “hold my bottle & watch this”! Now obviously we don’t want Aiden crawling around on the hard hospital floor, so we are very excited to see what happens when he’s finally home and has carpet to crawl around on! 

It’s finally time for the Fitzpatrick family - it’s moving week!! This Friday we will gain possession of our new home and begin moving in! While we have until the 14th to be out of our apartment, we ultimately decided that we need to move everything this coming weekend, as we are getting closer and closer to Aiden coming home (no, we don’t know when he’s coming home, we just hope it’s soon). With that in mind, here are some ways we would ask all of our wonderful prayer warriors to lift us up in the coming days:

-S T R E S S: I won’t lie friends, this round has kicked our butts as a family and Andrew & I are barely hanging in there. Please pray for peace for us as we prepare for this move during an already stressful time, that we can get it ready for ourselves and for Aiden before he comes home. Please also pray for bodily calm & strength, as we are weary but know we have a lot to do this weekend.

- Counts!! Aiden’s counts appear to be holding for the moment with very little downward movement, so we are very hopefully that his numbers will start going up soon! Please keep Aiden’s little body in your prayers as his counts do come up, as this is also a painful process for his bones. Pray, too, that they come in quickly. We are very anxious to get back to a sense of normalcy and to once again all be under the same roof every night.