Life with Leukemia: Saturday Night Fever

Update 7/7/13: I made reference to Dr. P in this post. It seems that he was made aware haha. Which is actually a good thing because it was something I could see was affecting Tyler and I didn't want to have that happen. Since then he has been amazing to us and we appreciate his willingness to change to meet our needs. We are grateful for each and every Dr working on our case.

more like every night fever...

Every day around 4 or 5 Tyler spikes a fever. They measure it in Celcius here so if he hits 38.5  they will instantly bring Tyler ice packs and tylenol (or a cooling blanket). It has happened so frequently (at least once a day for the last 3 weeks) that Tyler can tell you when he feels it coming. He will get the chills and call the nurse in for the treatment. He has even gotten to the point where he can guess his temp as they take it. And he usually guesses right the nurses love that. Unfortunately, no one can figure out why he gets them... But we know they will.

He also gets a cough on and off. It starts as shortness of breath and turns into a cough. It usually perks up right as the dr. will ask if he's been coughing dang Dr. S. They are attributing that to some nogles they have found on his lungs, and have grown, since he has been here. The guess is that there is some type of fungus that is reactiving due to Tylers compromised immune system ummm what?! Insane right? So, the Infection Disease (ID for short) doctors just came in as I am typing and said tomorrow they will do one of two tests.

 1. Stick a tube with a camera down into his lungs and do a wash to test the junk in there.

2. Stick a needle into his lung from the outside and get a sample.

Ummm they both sound awful to me... Poor Tyler.

Speaking of this needle into his lungs... so this is a teaching hospital and the doctors rotate around once a month or so. Lucky us, we came in the week everyone is switching. So there's this new doctor like day 2 new named Dr. P.  He came in before rounds to check on Ty. Oh man he has the worst bedside manner EVER! He told Tyler some mumbo jumbo about how they can't send him home because he has some 30% chance of dying.... what?!?!? Who says that stuff? Oh man, anyways after he spews this nonsense he looks at his lil reminder paper and then back tracks with more nonsense. It was really just as hard to follow what he was saying as that last sentence was. 

THEN he comes in with the 6 billion doctors on rounds (just like in all Dr shows they do rounds) and Dr. G who we really enjoy, shes a small lady with a big brain is kindly telling Tyler about the above mentioned procedures and we are feeling informed about it. She mentions the needle and Tyler asked if it was very big. Dr. G says no, but Dr. P jumps in with "No it's pretty big" again WHAT?! Oh and that there will be no meds, just a stick to bite on and some jack daniels or some acholic beverage to numb the pain... this guy.

 We have decided that instead of complaining about him, we will just make fun of him behind his back (and I'm only kind of kidding about that). So ya, not a huge fan of Dr. P, which is a shame because I LOVE swimming.

UPDATE: Sweet little intern M just came in and said they will do the scope, official name is Bronchoscopy if you google that you WILL see a video of the inside of a person. Tyler won't be allowed to eat after midnight, which surpringly enough he has been. Last night he got up and some a homemade granola bar (thanks Lisa) in the middle of the night.
They will sedate him for the procedure, which puts him at ease.
I will video tape him once he is back in the room because I KNOW it will be worth watching later.
Tyler is doing awesome though and we really want everyone to focus their thoughts and energy on that. He can do everything for himself! Eat, drink, shower - the works. We are up and walking more. I love that the nurses here are getting to know us and will cheer him on as we walk laps. He sits in a chair instead of in his bed he did get a lecture from one of the dr's about staying the bed too much lol.
We had a wonderful visit from his mission president. He and his wife are so in tune with the spirit and have so much faith. We got a lot of great insight from them and more strength to go forward with faith.
We continue to be amazed at the love we feel from family and friends. We appreciate all your comments sent through facebook and we appreciate your prayers. Tyler asked me to ask you to pray that the doctors will find the source of his infection and cough so that we can go HOME!
p.s. why is blogspot so lame? I have 7 fonts to choose from and they all look like this.