Timmy and Interferon

First, I watn to talk about my brother. If you scroll down my blog, there is a pic on the side of me and my brother. My brother is the baby of the three of us kids, and he means teh world to me. Because of my cancer, I havne't seen him as much as I would. We recieved a few phone calls Monday night about Timmy. The first one around 7pm, was to let my mom know that Timmy had been taken to the hospital and was being admitted to the hospital. When Timmy came home from the workshop (school) in the afternoon, his right index finger was swollen about 4x its normal size. (Timmy sucks his fingers from either hand, and has all of his life. He has a couple of fingers, a little swollen, a littl yellow and gross looking.) Turns out, he has an infection in his right index finger. Timmy had surgery late Monday night, like around midnight.

Mom stopped by the hospital yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon to see him. My heart goes out to him. His arm and hand are wrapped up, and his arm was elevated and hanging from some chain. The surgeon, cut open his finger and went down to his palm, to clean and scrape out the infection, and pour antibiotics through it. His finger is still cut open.

Timmy doesn't keep IVs in, so somebody called the house today, to get permission to put a PICC line or a port into Timmy so they can do a six week treatment of antibiotics through the IV. During this time, Timmy will be in the hospital. That is right, he will stay in the hospital for six weeks. As of now, I am not allowed to go see him. They supposed to tell my mom tomorrow, what type of infection he has. With my immune system being compromised by the Interferon, and with him having an infection, mom doesn't want me to catch anything.

Please keep him in your prayers. My mom did take a bag full of books to the hospital yesterday, so they have something to read to him. He does have a sitter, who is in the room 24/7, so he doesn't get out of bed, try to pull anything out, etc.

I now have 7 days of the high dose left to recieve. I am taking an antibiotic this week, one per day, and recieved more anti-nausea pills. The new anti-nausea pills makes me sleepy. I have been extremely fatigued this week. I sleep most of the afternoon. Twice so far, I've had the shakes. Yesterday morning, I took my temp and it was 100.2 F. I didn't go to Biblestudy last night, I couldn't keep my head up during supper. I couldn't get any more sleep after supper, even though I did try. I ended up running a fever. Like around 7 pm, I took my temp, because I was so warm. My temp was 101.1F. I called the doctor, like I was told to. My onc was paged, and he called me back. He asked me some questions, and I answered no to them. My onc said to take Tylenol, and my fever was due to the Interferon. Two hours later, it was at 99.5 F. This morning, it was at 99.4 F. I had to have blood drawn and send to the lab to check my blood count, and everything was fine, so thye started my treatment after 10:30 am. I am slightly warm now. Now you can see, as to why my mom said I can't go see my brother.

Thank you for your prayers.