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

After chemo cycle 1 had finished we treated ourselves to a very quiet Christmas at home. It was lovely to have three whole weeks without a hospital stay. I barely knew what to do with myself. Pre-cycle 2 hydration was planned for Tuesday 3 January 2017, where Ryan and I met with his paediatric consultant Dr C for a progress update. Which was very positive and encouraging. Chemotherapy cycle 2 then began as planned on Wednesday 4 January 2017 with the same SMILE protocol as detailed in our separate post.  Day 1 went like this: Ryan started Methotrexate at 9:30am. He then fell asleep at 11am and slept until 7pm. Resulting in a very boring day for me. I helped the youth worker to take down all the Christmas decorations from the ward. I went for a walk around the pond on the hospital grounds. I met with the Gastro Nurse and then the dietitian but neither of those meetings took very long. Overall a thumb-twiddling day, but thankfully no sickness for Ryan. To be fair I could perhaps hav