Admitted at NYU
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The Steinhaus Family
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The Steinhaus Family
This Monday was the one-year anniversary of Andrew being diagnosed with cancer. We are marking the date by doing many of the exact same things we did during this week last year.
Last night around 8pm, we went to the ER after Andrew developed a fever. His body temperature had been elevated for a few days, but never hit 100.4+ until yesterday. We originally thought it was a side effect of the injections used to boost his white blood cell count. But in the early evening, he had a 101.9 fever and the on-call oncologist urged him to go to the ER.
Andrew was immediately triaged due to suspicion of a "neutropenic fever," or when a fever occurs in someone with low white blood cells (specifically neutrophils), which are needed to fight infections. He was given a private room in the ER with a door to separate him from other patients—one bonus of being one of the sickest people in the place.
The doctors started looking for signs of infection, and we got admitted to the oncology floor around 2:30am. That's a record-fast turnaround for us from ER to admission. This morning, his blood cultures showed growth of a bacteria called streptococcus pneumoniae, confirming a bloodstream infection. This particular finding was surprising because it's relatively rare, and there are effective vaccines against it (though probably not given when Andrew was a kid). The fact that Andrew would surprise doctors with an unusual outcome is totally unsurprising to us.
Fortunately, streptococcus pneumoniae is typically highly sensitive to treatment, and he's been getting broad-spectrum IV antibiotics while we await more specific bloodwork that tells us the most effective type of antibiotic. Soon, he'll get a CT to try and identify the source of the infection (e.g, something on his heart, pneumonia in the lung, etc.). A bad result would be to see something in a bone. Andrew's fatigue is so severe today that he hasn't felt up to going to CT yet but hopefully will soon.
The crazy thing is that Andrew was supposed to get chemo yesterday, but didn't due to a scheduling error. Had he gone to NYU and the fever not been present (which it wasn't that early in the morning) and he got chemo, it could have sent this infection out of control and created a dire situation. We are so grateful that didn't happen, and we now have a chance to treat it.
We are likely staying at the hospital for several days at least. After looking at imaging, the doctors will want to rerun blood cultures that come back clean. From there, we'll make a plan about how long to take the antibiotics, how to take them (oral or through a midline or PICC line), when he can go home, and when he could resume chemo, which we obviously need to do ASAP.
We are likely staying at the hospital for several days at least. After looking at imaging, the doctors will want to rerun blood cultures that come back clean. From there, we'll make a plan about how long to take the antibiotics, how to take them (oral or through a midline or PICC line), when he can go home, and when he could resume chemo, which we obviously need to do ASAP.
We'll keep you all updated. Thanks to those of you who are already praying. That lifts us up.
Elyse Steinhaus
6 months ago
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