Midnight fever

It's just past midnight and I've registered a few fever spikes ... the perfect excuse for a car ride in the middle of the night. I was admitted to hospital at 2am and it was a rough night for me. I developed chills and shivers (for the first time) and couldn't be comforted. My hands and feet turned white and my fingernails and toenails turned almost purple. Mummy and Daddy were worried as this had not happened before and I didn't have a fever then. The doctor said the chills are likely due to a bacterial infection. They started me on broad spectrum antibiotics and took a blood sample for a blood culture test (standard procedure for patients admitted to PICC for fevers). It will be at least 48 hours before the blood culture shows up anything.

I still haven't regained my appetite and the doctors are concerned about my loss of weight. It is likely that I will be given a nutrition "bag" instead of the usual saline solution tomorrow. The nutrition bag contains the essential elements and minerals which will supplement my very pathetic food intake. It will be hooked up to Mr Hickman so that makes feeding easy (I can't say no!).

My doctor told me today that they have found 4 cord bloods which are suitable. The next step is to do a confirmatory typing (CT) test for each one to ascertain the best match for me. One of the deciding factors will be the number of stem cells present in the cord. As I am small-sized, I only need one cord so the greater the number of stem cells present in the cord blood, the better it is because of the increased chances of engraftment. This is what is meant by "the success rate is related to the dose of cells transplanted in relation to the weight of the patient". I hope this answers your question, Hannah.