The Bacon Family Blog

I wanted to add pictures from Christmas but I'm having some technical difficulties, so I'll have to post them later.

Joey has been sick the last couple of weeks and we narrowly missed being in the hospital during Christmas.  However, we got to stay home and we all had a great weekend!

On the 12th, his cough was worse, so I took him to Immediate Care and found out that he had a sinus infection. He started on an antibiotic, on top of the one he takes regularly while he's on chemo.  That next weekend, we went to Branson and spent a day at Silver Dollar City (I'll post pics later).  We had a great time.

After we got home, I noticed that his breathing wasn't quite right.  I called his asthma doctor Wed morning (the 21st) and she wanted to see him right away.  She confirmed he was wheezing and his breathing tests showed a slight problem.  She decided to do a chest x-ray just to be safe and we discovered he had pneumonia.  The doctor was surprised since he was already on 2 antibiotics.  We also discovered that his immune system was very low (ANC was 300, compared to a normal range of 2,000-5,000). So he started on a 3rd antibiotic, more breathing treatments, etc.  He was on a total of 11 different medicines overall.  Dr. Rosen let us stay home as long as he didn't get a fever and I gave him an update twice each day. On Friday (the 23rd), I took him in to check his counts again and ran into his pediatrician who wanted to take a look at him.  His wheezing was a little worse, so we had to wait there for his counts to see if he was going to go home or to the hospital.  I got a little nervous, but, luckily, his counts had gone up and we were allowed to go home (with 1 more medicine added).

Christmas was great. We had family gatherings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Grandma spoiled the kids as usual.

I got to be home all week, so the kids have done a lot of relaxing. I spent Mon -Thur working on the house.  All of the Christmas stuff is put away until next year, the presents are all put away, the laundry is done and the house is clean.  It will actually stay clean all weekend, but only because we're now at the lake house. I hate going back to work after a break with housework left undone, so I wanted everything completed before we left town.

On Thursday, we had a follow-up appointment with Joey's allergy/asthma doctor.  His breathing tests were better but she still heard wheezing, so we are going to start him on another antibiotic just to be safe.

By the way... this is the same allergy doctor who discovered Joey's leukemia. During the appointment on the 21st, we were in the same exam room that we were in that day.  It was strange being in the same room again - she even noticed it and almost moved us. We talked a bit about how great it is to be in the room again but with Joey doing so well now.

Each of the 3 appointments we've had over the last week were about 2 hours each, along with 2 labs to check his counts and several phone calls and trips to the pharmacy.  It gets really tiring, but I'm very thankful that Joey has many doctors looking out for him and taking care of him.

On top of all the breathing issues, he had chemo this last week.  If you add up all of the meds together, he took 12 different medications over the last week. I went to the pharmacy (I'm there at least once each week now), and I had 6 to pick up for Joey.  The woman there said "He's on 2 antibiotics?" I said "He's actually on 3 right now" and she looked at me like I was crazy.

Through-out all of it, Joey hasn't really felt bad. I could tell some times he has been tired, but not much more than that.  It amazes me that his body can be sick and we'll pump him fill of medicines, but he's still running around like a normal 6-yr-old boy.