There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

Whole Body Reaction to Infection Ryan completed chemotherapy cycle 4 in March 2017. We were discharged from the Teenage Cancer Trust ward at Cardiff hospital and managed a week at home before Ryan was unfortunately admitted to Carmarthen hospital with febrile neutropenia. Febrile neutropenia is a whole-body reaction to infection when there is a low immunity due to chemotherapy. Ryan's temperature reached 40.1C and his lymphocyte white blood cell count was 0.2. When the count falls below 1, this is called neutropenia and infections become a high risk. Neutropenia is very common in cancer patients and we have done well to avoid an episode up to this stage. The standard oncology protocol is to spend a minimum of 48 hours on IV antibiotics and 7-10 days on growth hormone injections to support the recovery of the white blood cell count. It didn’t go quite as smoothly as this however for Ryan, but that is whole other story that will be told later. Chemotherapy is likely to cause a lo

Cycle 3 Chemo round 3 should have started at the beginning of February 2017 but it had to be delayed as Ryan's kidneys were struggling a little bit due to him being too dehydrated. The doctors sorted that problem and re-hydrated him, but the following day when they took blood to check his levels, his neutrophils had dropped to 0.6. They have to be above 1 to be able to have chemotherapy. So treatment was delayed a second day. On day three his blood neutrophils had dropped further to 0.5 so we were discharged from the hospital and advised to go home and wait for them to improve. Before we went home though, the doctor and dietitian came to chat about Ryan's nausea and lack of gastrostomy feeding. They had a few ideas, but they wanted to make only one change at a time so they know what worked or what did not. A different anti-sickness medication, a different type of feed, they also wanted to start a diuretic and a laxative as his gut is not working as well as it should. We had a

SMILE Chemotherapy We were originally given a tentative date of Monday 21 November to begin his first of six SMILE chemotherapy cycles, but the delay to Radiotherapy due to the peritonitis episode pushed that date back once again. One thing you have to accept with cancer is nothing going to plan, or to date. Not easy if you are a control freak like me. Each Chemo cycle will last 28 days. Day 1-4 will be in the Teenage Cancer Trust Unit (TCT), Cardiff. Days 5-28 will be either at home recovering or in Glangwili Hospital, Carmarthen for blood monitoring and chemo injections. I will put a full breakdown of the 5 drugs that SMILE stands for, how they are given and on which days onto a separate post here for anyone who is interested in that much detail.  Before chemotherapy could commence Ryan needed to have a Hickman Line fitted which meant operation number 7 on 1st December 2016. Most teenage and adult patients have a PICC line, but due to Ryan's malnutrition, the veins in his arms a